Matthew S. Kayser, MD, PhD

Matthew S. Kayser, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Physician-of-Record

Kayser Lab

For scheduling appointments in Dr. Kayser's Sleep Mental Health clinic, please call (215) 898-8298. 

Matthew Kayser, MD, PhD received his ScB with Honors in neuroscience from Brown University, and earned his MD/PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kayser then trained as a resident in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2013, Dr. Kayser became the Physician-of-Record in the Unit for Experimental Psychiatry and an Attending Physician in the Department of Psychiatry at Penn. Dr. Kayser's research has appeared in prominent journals such as Science, Neuron, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and JAMA Neurology, and he has been recognized with awards from the NIMH, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American College of Psychiatrists for his accomplishments. In addition to his research, Dr. Kayser has been recognized by the students at Penn Med with their highest award for outstanding clinical teaching and has helped develop a curriculum to educate medical students on the anatomical basis of psychiatric disease.

Dr. Kayser has been engaged in research on neural circuit development and plasticity since he was an undergraduate at Brown University. There, he worked with Dr. Mark Bear on the dynamic plasticity of synaptic strength, and discoveries have had important implications for understanding and possibly treating Fragile X Syndrome. During his graduate work Dr. Kayser investigated how synapses form during development, providing the first evidence that dendritic filopodia motility and synaptogenesis are coupled by trans-synaptic signals. In order to understand how early life experiences impact brain wiring he began working with Dr. Amita Sehgal, using the powerful model system Drosophila to examine how sleep promotes normal brain maturation and affects synapse formation. His work demonstrates that specific circuits are dedicated to driving increased sleep early in life, and that disrupting sleep during a critical developmental period leads to neural circuit malformation and abnormal social behaviors in adulthood.

Huber KM, Kayser MS, Bear MF.  Role for rapid dendritic protein synthesis in hippocampal mGluR-dependent long-term depression. Science 288:1254-1256 (2000).

Kayser MS, McClelland AC, Hughes EG, Dalva MB. Intracellular and trans-synaptic regulation of glutamatergic synaptogenesis by EphB receptors. J Neurosci 26:12152-64 (2006).

Kayser MS, Dalva MB. Synaptogenesis. Chapter 20 in Textbook of Neural Repair and Rehabilitation, eds. ME Selzer, LG Cohen, FH Gage, S Clarke, PW Duncan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K. (2006).

Dalva MB, McClelland AC, Kayser MS. Cell adhesion molecules: signalling functions at the synapse. Nat Rev Neurosci 8:206-20 (2007).

Kayser MS, Nolt MJ, Dalva MB. EphB receptors couple dendritic filopodia motility to synapse formation. Neuron 59:56-69 (2008).

Kayser MS, Wyse GA. Synapses. Chapter 11 in Animal Physiology, 2nd Edition, eds. Hill RW, Wyse GA, Anderson M. Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers, Sunderland, MA. (2008).

McClelland AC, Sheffler-Collins SI, Kayser MS, Dalva MB. Ephrin-B1 and ephrin-B2 mediate EphB-dependent presynaptic development via syntenin-1. Proc Natl Acad Sci 106:20487-92 (2009).

Kayser MS, Dalmau J. Psychiatric Presentations of Autoimmune Encephalopathies. Psychiatric Times 27(3) (2010).

Kayser MS, Kohler CG, Dalmau J. Psychiatric manifestations of paraneoplastic disorders. Am J Psychiatry 167:1039-50 (2010).

Kayser MS, Dalmau J. The emerging link between autoimmune disorders and neuropsychiatric disease. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci 23:90-7 (2011).

Kayser MS*, Lee AC*, Hruska M, Dalva MB. Preferential Control of Basal Dendritic Protrusions by EphB2. PLoS One. 6(2):e17417 (2011) (*authors contributed equally).

Nolt MJ, Lin Y, Hruska M, Murphy J, Sheffler-Colins SI, Kayser MS, Passer J, Bennett MV, Zukin RS, Dalva MB. EphB Controls NMDA Receptor Function and Synaptic Targeting in a Subunit-Specific Manner. J Neurosci 31:5353-64 (2011).

Kayser MS, Dalmau J. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis in psychiatry. Curr Psych Rev 7:189-93 (2011).

Kayser MS, Titulaer MJ, Gresa-Arribas N, Dalmau J. Frequency and characteristics of isolated psychiatric episodes anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. JAMA Neurology 70:1133-9. (2013).

Kayser MS, Yue Z, Sehgal A. A critical period of sleep for development of courtship circuitry and behaviors. Science 344:269-74 (2014).

Kayser MS, Dalmau J. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, autoimmunity, and psychosis. Schizophr. Res S0920-9964(14)00546-5 (2014).

Weljie AM, Meerlo P, Goel N, Sengupta A, Kayser MS, Abel T, Birnbaum MJ, Dinges DF, Sehgal A. Oxalic acid and diacylglycerol 36:3 are cross-species markers of sleep debt. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 112(8):2569-74 (2015).

Kayser MS. Examining a role for N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor autoantibodies in psychiatric illness. Biol Psychiatry 15;77(6):506-7 (2015).

Kayser MS, Mainwaring B, Yue Z, Sehgal A. Sleep deprivation suppresses aggression in Drosophila. Elife. 4:e07643 (2015).


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