Mark Firman Bear is an American neuroscientist. He is currently the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator; an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Bear earned a B.Sc. degree from Duke University and received his doctorate in neurobiology at Brown University. As a postdoctoral fellow, he trained with Wolf Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, and with Nobel Laureate Leon Cooper at Brown.
Bear was the Sidney A. and Dorothy Doctors Fox Professor at Brown University's Alpert Medical School from 1996 to 2003, when he was appointed Picower Professor of Neuroscience at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He subsequently served as Director of The Picower Institute from 2007 to 2009. Bear was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1994 to 2015.
Bear's research focuses on the questions of how experience modifies the brain, and how this knowledge can be applied to overcome genetic or environmental adversity, with a special emphasis on amblyopia, autism, and fragile X syndrome. He has described the molecular mechanisms responsible for vision loss (amblyopia) caused by early life monocular deprivation, and uncovered a key pathophysiological basis for altered brain function in fragile X syndrome and autism. This work led to discovery of new approaches to correct these disorders in animal models. To advance these therapies into the clinic, Bear has been a scientific cofounder of several biotech companies, including Seaside Therapeutics, Allos Pharma, and Reboot Vision.
Bear's work has led to several significant contributions to science, which include:
Bear has received awards for teaching popular introductory neuroscience courses at Brown and MIT. He has mentored over 20 predoctoral and 25 postdoctoral trainees, many of whom are now distinguished independent investigators. With colleagues Barry Connors and Michael Paradiso, he co-authored the leading undergraduate introductory textbook in neuroscience, entitled Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain and now in its 5th edition. This book has introduced the field to hundreds of thousands of students worldwide over the lifetime of the title.