[2][3]  He and Schiller created the first computer-driven optical display capable of randomly interleaving sharply focused bar and edge stimuli and recording the responses of neurons in the visual system to measure their tuning properties .

[1]  With fellow student Helen Sherk, he used this apparatus to demonstrate innately selective responses in the visual cortex, confirming earlier qualitative studies of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, and to reveal that the effect of restricted rearing was to preserve innately selective responses rather than to instruct the development of neurons to reflect visual experience.

[1] Stryker pursued postdoctoral research in Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School under Torsten Wiesel and David Hubel, working also with fellows Carla Shatz, Simon LeVay, and Bill Harris.

[9][10]  He pioneered the use of the ferret for studies of the central visual system and used this species to delineate the role of neural activity in the development of orientation selectivity and cortical columns.

[13][14]  In collaboration with the Feldheim group at University of California, Santa Cruz, he revealed the interaction between neural activity and molecular signaling mechanisms responsible for the formation of azimuth maps in visual cortex and superior colliculus and their connections [15]  His and the Alvarez-Buylla laboratory discovered that transplantation of embryonic inhibitory neurons into postnatal visual cortex induces a second critical period of juvenile plasticity.