Mark Bear

Mark Bear is an American neuroscientist, focusing in understanding developmental plasticity in the visual cortex and experience-dependent synaptic modification in visual cortex and hippocampus, currently an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has described novel forms of procedural learning in the visual system, and investigated synaptic function in models of fragile X syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders

Bear earned a B.S. degree from Duke University and his Ph.D. in neurobiology at Brown University.

Selected publications

• Bear, Mark F., Barry W. Connors, and Michael A. Paradiso, eds. Neuroscience. Vol. 2. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007.
• Malenka, Robert C., and Mark F. Bear. "LTP and LTD: an embarrassment of riches." Neuron 44.1 (2004): 5-21.
• Bear, Mark F., Kimberly M. Huber, and Stephen T. Warren. "The mGluR theory of fragile X mental retardation." Trends in neurosciences 27.7 (2004): 370–377.
• Abraham, Wickliffe C., and Mark F. Bear. "Metaplasticity: the plasticity of synaptic plasticity." Trends in neurosciences 19.4 (1996): 126–130.
• Bear, Mark F., and Robert C. Malenka. "Synaptic plasticity: LTP and LTD." Current Opinion in Neurobiology 4.3 (1994): 389–399.
• Dudek, Serena M., and Mark F. Bear. "Homosynaptic long-term depression in area CA1 of hippocampus and effects of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor blockade." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 89.10 (1992): 4363–4367.
• Bear, Mark F., and Wolf Singer. "Modulation of visual cortical plasticity by acetylcholine and noradrenaline." (1986): 172–176.