Research
Our laboratory's major interest is the in the mechanisms responsible for the development and plasticity of precise connections within the central nervous system, and particularly in the role of neural activity in this process. Most of the work of the laboratory is on the visual cortex of the mouse. In our experiments, we induce activity-dependent plasticity experimentally through manipulations of genetics or experience or by pharmacological or neurophysiological intervention in order to discover what cellular mechanisms and what changes in cortical circuitry are responsible for rapid, long lasting changes in neuronal responses. We analyze these changes primarily in alert animals using microelectrode recordings, optical and metabolic signals related to neural activity, and anatomical and neurochemical tracing of connections. We seek to understand the coupling between the physiological and anatomical changes responsible for neuronal plasticity and the cellular mechanisms responsible for activity-dependent plasticity in the neocortex. A major goal is to understand how the limited plasticity in the adult brain differs from the much greater plasticity during critical periods in early life.
Professor Stryker is currently pursuing 3 projects, all through collaborations with other laboratories. First he is continuing work to understand the mechanisms of a phenomenon that his and Arturo Alvarez-Buylla’s lab discovered a decade ago: the creation of a second critical period of activity-dependent plasticity in adult visual cortex by the transplantation of specific types of embryonic interneurons. Andrea Hasenstaub’s lab has joined this collaboration. Second, he is collaborating with the Adesnik laboratory at Berkeley to identify the specific circuit changes that underlie visual cortical plasticity during the normal critical period. Third, he is collaborating with labs at Yale and UCLA on novel mathematical analyses of neural responses at successive stages of visual processing to illuminate the circuits responsible. He is no longer taking students or fellows in his own group but is a co-mentor to young scientists in labs with which he collaborates.
Michael Stryker studied at Deep Springs College and the University of Michigan, where he earned the B.A. in philosophy with a minor in mathematics and worked in the laboratory of James Olds. He earned the Ph.D. in Peter Schiller's laboratory at M.I.T. in 1975, followed by postdoctoral research with David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel at the Harvard Medical School. He joined the Physiology Department and nascent neuroscience program at UCSF as an assistant professor in 1978, held the W.F. Ganong Chair of Physiology at UCSF, and served on the Board of Directors of the Allen Institute He has been honored by the W. Alden Spencer Prize from Columbia, the Ralph W. Gerard Prize from the Society for Neuroscience, and by election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.