Professor Mriganka Sur, PhD, FRS, delivered the 2016 Departmental Michael M. Merzenich Discovery Lecture on October 14th. Dr. Sur is a world-renowned brain scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the Paul E. and Lilah Newton Professor of Neuroscience and the Director of the Simons Center for the Social Brain. Dr. Sur was an early collaborator of Dr. Merzenich’s and participated in some of the initial studies that established the nature and mechanisms of cortical plasticity. He presented new data on the role of inhibitory interactions in the shaping of plasticity and dynamics of circuits in the cerebral cortex. Before his lecture, Dr. Merzenich was recognized for his win of the prestigious 2016 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience “for the discovery of mechanisms that allow experience and neural activity to remodel brain function."