The Biology of Glucocorticoids: Normal and Abnormal Aggression

Glucocorticoid stress responses affect neural functions and behavior on an extremely wide time scale that ranges from minutes to lifetime. Mechanisms mediating their effects range from rapid and direct influences on cellular, such as neural functions, to lasting or sometimes quasi-permanent modification of the genes themselves by epigenetic phenomena. These genetic alterations do not affect nucleotide sequences but influence gene function and expression and may even be heritable as such, the effects of glucocorticoids may span generations.