Primary Job Title Picower Professor Primary Organization Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gender Male
Mark Bear is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and also serves as Picower Professor of Neuroscience in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Dr. Bear’s laboratory has substantially advanced knowledge of how the cerebral
cortex is modified by experience. He made fundamental discoveries on bidirectional synaptic plasticity, metaplasticity, the molecular basis of amblyopia (a cause of visual disability in children), and the pathophysiology of Fragile X Syndrome.
Dr. Bear has been at the forefront of the efforts to translate knowledge of autism pathophysiology into new treatments. After joining the MIT faculty in 2003, Dr. Bear later served as Director of The Picower Institute from 2007 to 2009.
Previously, he served on the faculty of Brown University School of Medicine for 17 years, where he held the Sidney A. Fox and Dorothea Doctors Fox Chair in Ophthalmology and Visual Neuroscience.
Dr. Bear earned his B.S. degree from Duke University and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Brown University. He completed his postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany and Brown University.
