Peter Sterling (born June 28, 1940) is an American

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its ...

physiologist Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...

and

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, Biological neural network, n ...

and Professor of Neuroscience at the

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine The Perelman School of Medicine, commonly known as Penn Med, is the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1765, the Perelman School of Medicine is the oldest medi ...

. He is the author of What Is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design (2020), and with Simon Laughlin, is an author of Principles of Neural Design.

Early life

Peter Sterling was born in 1940 in New York city to Phillip and

Dorothy Sterling Dorothy Sterling (née Dannenberg; November 23, 1913 – December 1, 2008) was an American writer and historian. After college, she worked as a journalist and writer in New York for several years, including work for the Federal Writers’ Pr ...

, writers and advocates for progressive causes. His sister is the noted researcher and professor

Anne Fausto-Sterling Anne Fausto-Sterling ( Sterling; born July 30, 1944) is an American sexologist who has written extensively on the biology of gender, sexual identity, gender identity, gender roles, and intersexuality. She is the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor Emer ...

. At the age of twenty, while a student at Cornell University in

Ithaca, New York Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named a ...

, he was arrested in

Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...

for participating in a Freedom Ride. He was set free after paying a fine and/or by mediation by Howard Allen Schneiderman, who recruited him to experimental biology.

Career

Peter Sterling attended

New York University Medical School NYU Grossman School of Medicine is a medical school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1841 and is one of two medical schools of the university, with the other being the Long Island School of ...

for two years, but voluntarily dropped out in order to study

neuroanatomy Neuroanatomy is the study of the structure and organization of the nervous system. In contrast to animals with radial symmetry, whose nervous system consists of a distributed network of cells, animals with bilateral symmetry have segregated, defin ...

. He received his PhD from

Western Reserve University Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

, where he worked on the

anatomical Anatomy () is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having it ...

organisation of the

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the spi ...

. Later he provided significant contributions to the knowledge about three-dimensional

retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...

microanatomy Histology, also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures vis ...

. In 1980 he was appointed professor of neuroscience at the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. Together with Joseph Eyer, Peter Sterling coined the term

allostasis Allostasis also known as “body budgeting” which Lisa Feldman Barret argues, proposes that efficient regulation requires preparing the body to satisfy the needs before they arise by budgeting those needed resources such as oxygen, insulin ...

for "stability through change",Sterling P; Eyer J (1988) Allostasis: a new paradigm to explain arousal pathology. In: Handbook of Life Stress, Cogintion and Health (Fisher S; Reason J, eds), pp 629-649. New York, NY: J. Wiley & Sons. which is now enjoying growing scientific attention, especially in the context of

allostatic load Allostatic load is "the wear and tear on the body" which accumulates as an individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress. The term was coined by Bruce McEwen and Eliot Stellar in 1993. It represents the physiological consequences of chroni ...

References

Selected works

# Stevens JK, Davis TL, Friedman N, Sterling P. A systematic approach to reconstructing microcircuitry by electron microscopy of serial sections. Brain Res. 1980 Dec;2(3):265-93. . # Sterling P, Eyer J. Biological basis of stress-related mortality. Soc Sci Med E. 1981 Feb;15(1):3-42. . # Sterling P. Deciphering the retina's wiring diagram. Nat Neurosci. 1999 Oct;2(10):851-3. . # Sterling P. Principles of Allostasis: Optimal Design, Predictive Regulation, Pathophysiology, and Rational Therapeutics. In: Schulkin J. Allostasis, Homeostasis, and the Costs of Physiological Adaptation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York 2004. # Sterling P. Allostasis: a model of predictive regulation. Physiol Behav. 2012 Apr 12;106(1):5-15. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.06.004. Epub 2011 Jun 12. . # Sterling P, Laughlin S. Principles of Neural Design. MIT Press 2015. # Sterling P. Predictive regulation and human design. Elife. 2018 Jun 29;7. pii: e36133. doi: 10.7554/eLife.36133. # Schulkin J, Sterling P. Allostasis: A Brain-Centered, Predictive Mode of Physiological Regulation. Trends Neurosci. 2019 Oct;42(10):740-752. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2019.07.010. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Sterling, Peter 1940 births Living people American neuroscientists American anatomists 20th-century psychologists 21st-century psychologists