He is a former Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator;[1] an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences;[2] and a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.

As a postdoctoral fellow, he trained with Wolf Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, and with 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 has described novel forms of procedural learning in the visual system, and investigated synaptic function in models of fragile X syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders.

[4][5] His long-standing scientific interest is in how the brain is modified by experience, and his lab is currently focused on applying knowledge of the elementary mechanisms of synaptic plasticity to overcome genetic or environmental adversity.