Michael Stryker's laboratory studies the organization, development, and plasticity of the central visual system. Most of his laboratory's effort focuses on the primary visual cortex of the mouse, using electrophysiology and 2-photon microscopy to perturb and measure the activity of genetically identified types of neurons in alert animals.
In normal development, neural connections to and within the visual cortex are refined to high precision through the action of activity-dependent mechanisms of neural plasticity in combination with specific molecular signals. His lab induces 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. His experiments investigate the differences between the rapid plasticity of the juvenile brain and the slower, qualitatively distinct plasticity of the adult brain.
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.
Projects:
He 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 for changes.
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.