Hollis T. Cline is an American neuroscientist and the Director of the Dorris Neuroscience Center at the Scripps Research Institute in California.
While at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cline was the Marie Robertson Professor of Neurobiology, and served as the Director of Research from 2002-2006.
[9] 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".
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.