Hollis T. Cline

Hollis T. Cline is an American neuroscientist and the Director of the Dorris Neuroscience Center at the Scripps Research Institute in California. Her research focuses on the impact of sensory experience on brain development and plasticity.

Cline is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Cline was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.

Education and career Cline earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Bryn Mawr College in 1977. While an undergraduate, she worked at Rockefeller University in Christian de Duve’s lab.

In 1985, Cline earned a doctorate in neurobiology from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under Gunther Stent. She then joined Martha Constantine-Paton’s lab at Yale University in 1985 for postdoctoral studies, In 1989, Cline joined Richard W. Tsien’s lab as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University Medical Center.

Shortly thereafter, Cline was appointed to the faculty in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Iowa Medical School. She moved to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1994, where she was promoted to Professor in 1998. While at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cline was the Marie Robertson Professor of Neurobiology, and served as the Director of Research from 2002-2006. She moved to The Scripps Research Institute in 2008, where she is Chair of the Department Neuroscience. Cline was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, "for seminal studies of how sensory experience affects the development of brain structures and function and for generous national and international advisory service to neuroscience". She was awarded the Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Her studies have helped increase understanding of mechanisms controlling topographic map formation, neurogenesis, synapse formation and plasticity, neuron development, and assembly of brain circuits. Cline's study demonstrated that sensory information, particularly visual input, activates activity-dependent cellular and molecular mechanisms that eventually regulate the formation and stability of synapses to control the development of neurons, brain circuits, and behavior. According to this hypothesis, various molecular and cellular processes that have an impact on synaptic stability will ultimately have an effect on brain connectivity and function. More recently, Cline has shown that exosomes are involved in the development of neurons and brain circuitry. Cline’s studies have relevance to a variety of developmental neurological disorders such as fragile X syndrome, Rett syndrome, autism spectrum disorders, and schizophrenia - which are the result of errors in the development of synaptic function and brain circuitry. Alongside her research, Cline is known for her work as a mentor and advocate.

Awards and honours 1991 McKnight Neuroscience Scholar Award 2005 National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award 2012 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2013 Scripps Research Institute Outstanding Mentor Award 2019 Society for Neuroscience Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award

Selected publications

Cline serves on the editorial boards of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, Frontiers in Neural Circuits, Journal of Developmental Biology, and Neural Development.