Ilana Witten
@IlanaWitten
Followers
8,826
Following
895
Media
47
Statuses
1,224
Professor @PrincetonNeuro . Neural circuits for reward learning and decision making.
Joined June 2015
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
Explore trending content on Musk Viewer
Hamas
• 924064 Tweets
#NXTNoMercy
• 84114 Tweets
ESPN
• 73635 Tweets
YouTube TV
• 58041 Tweets
Dinamarca
• 49939 Tweets
Big 10
• 35792 Tweets
Giulia
• 34639 Tweets
Falcao
• 24855 Tweets
Q33 U STEAL MY HEART
• 22293 Tweets
DirecTV
• 20982 Tweets
Roxanne
• 17774 Tweets
Hudson
• 17538 Tweets
Braves
• 16569 Tweets
MIX師
• 15850 Tweets
Grant Justice
• 15084 Tweets
Trojans
• 10987 Tweets
Lacy
• 10953 Tweets
解雇規制緩和
• 10692 Tweets
Jaida
• 10498 Tweets
Dopamine imaging in VR! In the same dopamine neurons, reward prediction error is multiplexed with representations of specific task variables - congratulations to Engelhard and coauthors
@PrincetonNeuro
25
116
350
For anyone w/ long Covid fatigue, I strongly recommend paxlovid! Started it with zero expectations earlier this week, and by day 2 the best I’ve felt since pre-Covid (3.5 months ago)
16
37
329
Glad to reread Ben Barres’s article. This line nails it: “When it comes to bias, it seems that the desire to believe in a meritocracy is so powerful that until a person has experienced sufficient career-harming bias themselves they simply do not believe it exists.”
5
111
255
New paper by the incredible
@JuliaMaryCox
& team! "A neural substrate of sex-dependent motivation"
(spoiler: sex differences in motivation to perform a decision-making task are mediated by ACC->DMS neurons)
6
61
228
Curious what resilient vs susceptible mice are learning during chronic social stress, and how dopamine contributes?
Like behavioral quantification, individual differences, and neural correlates?
Check out our 🤩 new study w the amazing
@lindsaywillmore
@Neurrriot
1/
5
51
211
review with
@JuliaMaryCox
on Striatal Circuitry for Learning and Decision-making
I hope it's useful to newcomers in the field!
@PrincetonNeuro
@PsychPrinceton
3
59
177
New paper led by
@Nparker327
@JuliaMaryCox
avinash! We recorded & perturbed inputs to NAc during a reversal learning task
6
38
173
18
62
156
Excited about our new paper, by the impressive
@yoon0632
! She measured & manipulated DA & ACh activity during short-term memory, and specifically during the the delay period, VTA DA related to memory w/ an inverted-U.
(w/
@westontfleming
@AkhilBandi15
@engelbio
, among others)
Very cool paper - you really need to hit the Goldilocks amount of VTA-DA neuronal activity for short-term memory!
A Comparison of Dopaminergic and Cholinergic Populations Reveals Unique Contributions of VTA Dopamine Neurons to Short-Term Memory
2
24
105
7
35
153
What contributes to drug craving? Degraded neural representations in PFC-NAc neurons of rats with high cocaine motivation:
So happy to see Courtney Cameron's work out!!
(w
@muruganmalu
@yoon0632
@engelbio
)
@PrincetonNeuro
@NeuroCellPress
8
47
149
I’m excited and a little nervous to give my first remote seminar shortly. (Also sleepy.) Thanks
@Neuro_CF
for the opportunity.
#carbonfootprint
#goinggreen
7
4
148
Excited this is out -- by comparing virtual reality tasks and GLM-HMM states,
@scott_bolkan
and
@theiStone
show that striatal control of behavior depends on cognitive demands and internal state.
Whether dorsomedial striatum direct and indirect pathways provide strong and opponent control of behavior depends on both the demands imposed by a task and the internal state of mice when performing it
New from
@IlanaWitten
,
@jpillowtime
, and colleagues
0
37
134
3
29
140
Check out
@westonfleming
new work on cholinergic interneurons!
Short version: Individual differences in acetylcholine predicts extinction, extinction decreases presynaptic strength, & cholinergic interneurons bidirectionally control that plasticity.
1
31
129
thankful for
@lisa_giocomo
- not only a brilliant scientist but also a friend who lent me a matching dress when my luggage was lost en route from
@optogrc
to
@HHMINEWS
#twinning
Earlier this week, we welcomed many of the 2024 HHMI Investigators as they visited our headquarters in Chevy Chase, Maryland. We're excited to see where their science leads them in the years to come!
Learn more about HHMI's newest Investigators here:
0
17
134
4
1
128
Pls RT: We are looking for a research assistant to help with our neuroscience experiments
@PrincetonNeuro
. Good for getting more experience before applying to grad school, OR for someone looking for a longer term position. Please apply!!
1
124
126
New preprint w
@Nparker327
, Avinash, Mark Goldman!
Synergy between expt & circuit modeling leads to a proposed (and generalizable) model for calculating reward prediction error in dopamine neurons, with a key role for choice-selective sequences 1/n
5
51
124
Thrillled to get a dopamine dress from my lab as a present!!
(Thanks to
@Finkelsteins
@muruganmalu
@JuliaMaryCox
@lilixcai
@Nparker327
@yoon0632
@AnnaZhukovskaya
and the rest of our lab)
3
5
120
Rewrd prediction error does not explain movement selectivity in dopamine in DMS - now officially out in
@eLife
- a pleasure to work with
@rachel_s_l
@marcelomattar
@Nparker327
@nathanieldaw
2
35
115
Happy to see so many people openly sharing their decision to leave academia, and to hear about all the exciting opportunities in industry. I love my job, but realize academia isn’t the best for everyone. It’s good there are many paths/options.
0
2
113
very happy to share
@neurocaience
's thesis work on complimentary roles of medial & lateral VTA DA signals in regulating fear extinction. with
@westontfleming
@katherineee_7
@PrincetonNeuro
Distinct signals in medial and lateral VTA dopamine neurons modulate fear extinction at different times
#bioRxiv
2
2
21
5
35
110
Congrats to
@KarlDeisseroth
on being awarded the Kyoto prize for advanced technology (and on being the youngest laureate in the history of the prize!).
0
12
96
Excited to share Ben Engelhard‘s cool work doing 2p imaging of ensembles of VTA dopamine neurons during decision making. With
@JuliaMaryCox
@Finkelsteins
@nathanieldaw
as well as other
@PrincetonNeuro
collaborators not on Twitter
Specialized and spatially organized coding of sensory, motor, and cognitive variables in midbrain dopamine neurons
#biorxiv_neursci
0
23
39
2
38
92
HUGE congratulations to
@neurocaience
on the publication of her thesis work this month, AND an awesome defense yesterday. Thank you so much for being in our lab. We'll miss you!
@PrincetonNeuro
7
6
90
ACC-DMS contributes to sex differences in value-dependent motivation
cool new study from
@JuliaMaryCox
, with help from
@AddieMinerva
@ZimmermanNeuro
@szorowi1
@westonfleming
@bmcmannon
, among others 1/n
3
30
85
Excited to see
@neurocaience
work out in final form in
@eLife
!
Distinct signals in medial and lateral VTA dopamine neurons mediate fear extinction at different times.
With
@westontfleming
@gwgundersen
@JuliaMaryCox
@pizanok2
5
18
83
So proud of & excited for
@AnnaZhukovskaya
, who defended her thesis, submitted her 1st first author paper, and saw it go out for review, all between Wednesday night and Friday afternoon. 🔥 Very rewarding to see all the hard work pay off!!
1
2
72
Applications are now open for the basal ganglia GRC and GRS in March!!! There is going to be stellar science and lots of CA sunshine
1
21
71
just finished up with
@yoon0632
thesis defense ...
*so* proud of all her beautiful work and the incredibly clear presentation!!!
(and happy we will have her here for just a little longer as she wraps up her papers)
@PsychPrinceton
@PrincetonNeuro
2
1
70
Memory enhancement via astrocytes, from Inbal Goshen and co.
0
15
68
new preprint from
@AnnaZhukovskaya
!
Susceptible mice have heightened lateral habenula activity form the first day of stress, which produces a sustained brainwide shift in the balance of subcortical vs cortical activity
w/
@ZimmermanNeuro
@lindsaywillmore
@Neurrriot
Differences in an aversive teaching signal produce brainwide and behavioral substrates of susceptibility
#biorxiv_neursci
0
1
5
0
13
67
Big congrats to
@westonfleming
for a successful PhD defense last week
@PrincetonNeuro
. Very elegant work on cholinergic interneurons. Proud to have worked w/ you & excited to watch your next steps & future successes
@gstuber
@UW
.
6
5
70
Bittersweet to say goodbye to the amazing
@muruganmalu
, who leaves to start her lab at Emory! Watch out for more great things from her!
w/
@alexpan_neuro
@ryanjhcho
@yoon0632
@AnnaZhukovskaya
@JuliaMaryCox
@LauraHaetzel
@lilixcai
@theiStone
@rachel_s_l
(+others not on twitter)
2
3
65
Kicking it with
@MelissaRWarden
@kaymtye
@zhangf
at the
@nyscf
retreat (another
@KarlDeisseroth
lab reunion)
#nyscf
0
7
66
More social-spatial codes!! 2 new papers (in hipp of bats & rats), in addition to our recent mPFC paper (in mice):
Congrats all
The brain's navigation system also monitors the movement of others, experiments in bats and rats suggest.
0
27
41
2
18
66
VERY excited about
@ZimmermanNeuro
cool story on temporal credit assignment + post-ingestive learning. Check it out!!
How do we associate the flavors we experience during a meal 🍽️😋 with postingestive effects, like food poisoning 🤢🤮, that arise minutes or hours later? My new preprint with
@IlanaWitten
digs into how the brain solves this credit assignment problem. 1/4
9
64
247
1
7
63
Congrats Dr.
@theHessam
for a successful defense in
@PrincetonNeuro
!!! (1st PhD from the Witten lab!)
0
1
62
Also excited that our 1st 2
@biorxiv_neursci
papers ended up at
@CellCellPress
and
@nature
....
I hope other labs also post their best work on
@biorxiv_neursci
!
0
8
62
Our new paper on dissociated sequences and stimulus encoding in striatum during working memory
@theHessam
@yoon0632
9
45
60
expts (in VR) and theory from
@naoshigeuchida
@gershbrain
on uniting recent observations of ramping signals in DA neurons with the RPE framework
'A unified framework for dopamine signals across timescales'
i like the simple f1
0
15
53
We were very surprised to discover that the presence of a *pre-existing, pre-training* visual response in a dopamine projection can explain the large individual differences in acquisition of a visual decision-making task
@alexpan_neuro
@ysanchezaraujo
Why do some animals learn faster than others? In a
@IlanaWitten
,
@nathanieldaw
,
@jpillowtime
and
@IntlBrainLab
collab,
@ysanchezaraujo
and I explored whether pre-existing dopamine dynamics might be to blame.
4
26
120
1
7
50
The animal videos are the best part of Twitter
This squid can change its color from gray to clear and back in the blink of an eye. But this is not uncommon: cephalopods are able to change color so quickly because their color-changing skin cells are under neural control [gif: ]
26
526
1K
1
5
50
Our lab vs
@jpillowtime
lab at laser tag! So fun. And we won! 🥇
@lilixcai
@muruganmalu
@Nparker327
@alexpan_neuro
@JuliaMaryCox
@SagivYotam
@PrincetonNeuro
0
1
50
sooo proud of
@yoon0632
@lilixcai
for giving their 1st conference talks to packed rooms
#sfn2019
#SfN19
(thanks for the shot
@alexpan_neuro
)
1
2
49
Looking forward to speaking on neural circuit dynamics of working memory @
#Braininitiatve
symposium
#FENS2018
10:50 today A4+5!
Representing
#BRAINCOGS
-
@brody_lab
@jpillowtime
@SamWangPhD
@sueannkoay
@lucasmpinto
many more...
(Come @ 9:45 to hear Donoghue, Zeng, Emiliani)
0
3
44
If you are interested in experimental/theory collaboration, apply to
@IntlBrainLab
#postdoc
opening to work with me and
@jpillowtime
! great resources & community
@PrincetonNeuro
.
Excited about
#teamscience
? Enjoy international collaborations? Join us! The
@IntlBrainLab
is looking for
#postdoc
scientists. Here is info about positions (Berkeley, Princeton, London, etc): & about who we are is here
#neuroscience
2
53
60
0
31
44
So happy for Dr.
@lindsaywillmore
, who gave a fantastic defense last week! very fun to work w/ you &
@Neurrriot
+ excited for your next steps
@DeepMind
1
1
44
Goodbye
@Nparker327
! So happy I got to work with you!! Have fun in the Ruta lab
@RockefellerUniv
. You’re going to do amazing things!
cc
@alexpan_neuro
@westontfleming
@VCorbit
@ryanjhcho
@LauraHaetzel
@JuliaMaryCox
@AnnaZhukovskaya
@neurocaience
@SagivYotam
@theiStone
3
1
43
Placebo effect is real, and it’s a big effect.
Intriguing data from
@rolls_asya
on possible mechanisms linking
#dopamine
to the immune system.
@NatureComms
(I agree w/ other neuro comments that more behavior & neurophys would be interesting, but this is still fascinating)
Whoa, VTA dopamine neuron activation reduces tumor growth and immunorepressive response to tumors in mice
10
49
96
0
7
43
We’re going to miss Hee Jae Jang so much! But also looking forward to watching her continue to kill it in neuro grad school.
@nyuniversity
@nyulangone
@schneiderneuro
Saying goodbye w
@Nparker327
@AnnaZhukovskaya
@lilixcai
@muruganmalu
@alexpan_neuro
@theiStone
@SagivYotam
2
3
42
Great idea with
#BasalGangliaGRC
and
#Dopamine2020
cancelled. Looking forward to it, and hearing
@TaliaLerner
@jtdudman
@jesseGlab
@nathanieldaw
@naoshigeuchida
@yael_niv
@KhaliqLab
@berke_lab
+ Many more.
We are excited to announce a virtual conference on dopamine research happening May 20-22!
We have a great lineup of invited speakers and are accepting abstract submissions for talks and posters until May 8th.
Register and spread the word!
5
139
207
0
7
41
@pollyp1
1st bioRxiv paper posted - and I'm ready for my bumper sticker 😀
Combined social and spatial coding in a descending projection from the prefrontal cortex
#biorxiv_neursci
0
4
10
0
7
41
Just back from my 1st science mtg in canada (
@CIFAR_News
)
Awed by the incredibly kind and positive and constructive atmosphere - did not know that scientific discourse can look like this!! will try to emulate in future mtgs
(missed you there
@sjo09
)
1
1
39
Thank you power hour panel for sharing your perspective
#basalgabgliaGRC
- lots of important insights!
@KhaliqLab
@arifahamid
@sciencejuls
@ruimcosta
@RaffaellaTonini
Venessa Ruta Alexandra Nelson Jun Ding
0
2
39
Getting excited to hood some
@PrincetonNeuro
PhD grads with
@MurthyLab
Thanks for the shot
@SagivYotam
2
1
39
So he was right that we were going to get tired of winning.
For the United States of America to have the worst
#Covid_19
trajectory in the ENTIRE world (even accounting for questionable data from China) represents a catastrophic failure of national leadership. The warnings were all there. There’s no excuse.
1K
11K
27K
0
1
37
learning via plasticity in synapses vs plasticity in intrinsic excitability? -- some very interesting points!
ensemble integration may use LTP / cell-autonomous changes in intrinsic excitability-- Neurocentric View of Learning
1
7
20
0
9
34
Toast for Courtney Cameron’s paper coming out soon
@NeuroCellPress
&
@rachel_s_l
‘s recent
@eLife
paper (w
@nathanieldaw
). But somehow the honorees missed it. At least that gave us a reason to finally take a lab pic (to prove we were thinking of them)!
@PrincetonNeuro
0
1
33
business insider took the plunge and called the race - maybe the networks will soon follow!
although now that i discovered the hilarious nevada-vote-counting memes, i don't really mind the wait.
0
0
32
Thanks for the write up
@emilysinger
- I feel lucky to work with talented people on fun problems
@Nparker327
,
@JuliaMaryCox
, Ben Engelhard, Weston Fleming
@PrincetonNeuro
@PsychPrinceton
Dopamine: Beyond the Rush of a Reward. In addition to reward prediction error, growing evidence suggests the chemical also tracks movement, novelty and other neurobiological factors. Work from
@ilanawitten
,
@naoshigeuchida
,
@alfairhall
, Vanessa Ruta
0
17
40
0
0
31
Check out our posters this afternoon
#SfN2018
#SfN18
: DDD12-13 (ChAT interneuron-mediated plasticity in NAc; ChAT neurons in basal forebrain
@yoon0632
)
And tmrw morning : NN4 (dopamine in DMS - movement & value separation
@rachel_s_l
@nathanieldaw
)
@PrincetonNeuro
0
8
31
exciting new theory from the impressive Sue Ann Koay ... ideas about the relationship between correlated behavioral variables, encoding + (efficient) decoding.
New on the bioRxiv from
@brody_lab
Brody, David Tank and collaborators: Sequential and efficient neural-population coding of complex task information
0
19
32
0
5
30
Hoping the basal ganglia grc attendants don’t come down with Covid in the coming days🤞. Please let us know if you do - good for us to all know the risks.
1
0
30
@DrNadiaChaudhri
You are an inspiration, Nadia. Your sun is truly radiant. I have learned so much about how to live life from your tweets — thank you for that gift. I think about you daily and wish you and your family strength and peace.
1
0
28
Nice writeup on efforts from
@MSchottdorf
& others for standardizing/sharing systems neuro data
@PrincetonNeuro
@YatsenkoDimitri
@brody_lab
@enieh36
#Braincogs
#datajoint
2
8
26
wise words, as always, from
@ShanskyLab
The premise that sexism in science is immutable and must be built into training and mentoring plans instead of rooted out and destroyed has got to be the hottest of hot garbage takes I’ve seen in a while.
5
58
345
0
1
26
Cool new work from
@neimarkgeffen
Projection from the Amygdala to the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus Amplifies Cortical Sound Responses
(Perhaps another future attendee of
#amygdalaGRC
@superkash
@KateWassum
)
1
6
27
Excellent talk on a cool new manifold discovery method
#cosyne19
Anqi Wu
@jpillowtime
Happening now at
#cosyne19
: Anqi Wu from
@jpillowtime
lab on “Learning a latent manifold of odor representations in piriform cortex.” Be here or be square!
1
3
25
0
4
26
impressive work from
@marykaylobo
on dramatic cell-type specific reduction of dendritic arborization due to social stress & drug abstinence
#grccatecholamines
#GRCcatecholamines2019
0
1
26
training opportunity at the interface of stats/ML and systems neuro!
@IlanaWitten
and I are recruiting a postdoc interested in statistical machine learning methods for the analysis of large scale neural imaging data. Email me your CV, contact info for three references, and three papers. Please retweet!
3
37
36
0
21
24
Thanks for the recommendation
@DShohamy
!! Fascinating & well written story of the history of women in biology (and the history of biology more broadly)
A must read if you care about science, history, or equality; if you are a grad student or dept head; if you want to feel good about society's progress or want to feel energized to keep fighting the good fight. Thank you
@kzernike
for writing and
@ArthurUhimov
for sharing
0
8
46
1
4
23
Congratulations to all, including
@PrincetonNeuro
faculty
@yelzebub
and alumni
@KanakaRajanPhD
@constan_lab
Congratulations to the 2022 McKnight Scholar awardees representing the country's best young
#neuroscientists
!
-Christine Constantinople, Ph.D.
-Bradley Dickerson, Ph.D.
-Markita Landry, Ph.D.
-Lauren Orefice, Ph.D.
-Kanaka Rajan, Ph.D.
-Weiwei Wang, Ph.D.
0
2
35
1
2
23
One week later, but still hilarious ...
On a scale from Bran Stark to Arya Stark, how much do you contribute to group projects?
#BattleofWinterfell
#GameofThrones
983
19K
91K
0
0
22
Really enjoyed jclubbing this paper today from
@naoshigeuchida
, Mitsuko, and
@WilliamMenegas
. Beautiful work.
1
3
21
Amazing news, very well deserved!! Watch out for more awesome work from
@ZimmermanNeuro
@PrincetonNeuro
Huge congrats to
@ZimmermanNeuro
on this truly well-deserved recognition! Read Chris’s essay on “The origins of thirst” at . Could not be more proud!!!
@UCSFNSGrad
@HHMINEWS
3
11
60
0
3
20
Thinking about the
#basalgangliaGRC
#powerhour
that
@KhaliqLab
and I are leading in March. Any tips on what has / hasn't worked in previous GRCs? And how do we get the senior male PIs to show up this year?
8
5
20
impressive work from
@tjp7rr
& co!
How can one brain structure guide movement, modulate sensation, and shape cognition and prevent autism from developing? We made a whole-brain atlas of the cerebellum's connections to the forebrain. What we found may surprise you!
New in Cell Reports:
12
103
349
1
4
19
Pls RT: Opening for a research asst to start this summer in our systems neuro lab
@PrincetonNeuro
. Good pre-grad schl. DM if interested. Thx
1
64
19
So cool!!! Congrats
@heejaesayshi
@constan_lab
Super proud of this tour de force preprint by
@heejaesayshi
. Acetylcholine demixes heterogeneous dopamine signals for learning and moving.
4
37
135
1
0
18
The app VoteWithMe shows you the voting record of all your contacts, to identify friends/family who can use an extra push to vote (shows voting history, registration). Convincing friends to vote is easier than strangers!! The app is great
@VoteWithMeApp
#VoteThemOut
0
4
18
Credit goes to Ben Engelhard, Joel Finkelstien and our other collaborators :)
Absolutely beautiful talk and work from
@IlanaWitten
lab dissecting out the organization, specialization, and functional roles of populations of dopamine neurons!
0
2
18
0
2
18
Another reason to do a postdoc
@PrincetonNeuro
-- esp given that this is not normalized for # of postdocs/institution
Okay I updated this with *everyone* I was told about, not just those with a GScholar profile
The New York lead widens
3
3
7
0
3
17
Beautiful work, Dr. Stone! Very excited for you and your next steps!
Thrilled to share that last Friday I defended my PhD
@PrincetonNeuro
, officially making me Dr. Stone! 👩🏻🎓😄 Shoutout to the dream team of advisors
@IlanaWitten
@jpillowtime
+ all my friends & family who showed up to support me.
Stay tuned for news on what I’ll be up to next… 👀
7
1
70
0
0
16
I had a nice visit ... thanks for the great questions!
@IlanaWitten
killed it today
@Penn
. She gave a great talk on reward prediction encoding in striatum in various behavior contexts
0
0
2
0
0
16
@BoulangerLab
Hahaha!! Incredible photo! Were any squirrels hurt in the making of that photo?
1
0
15
Come see our
#vida2020
posters in 2 minutes (1:30-3pm)!
Spike inference in DA neurons - poster
#50
-
@westontfleming
, Sean Jewell, Ben Engelhard
@daniela_witten
D1R/D2R DMS in decision-making - poster
#34
- Scott Bolkan,
@theiStone
,
@jpillowtime
I’ll be presenting a poster on spike inference in VTA dopamine neurons at
@VidaConference
today from 1:30-3pm EST! Featuring much of the data
@IlanaWitten
gave her talk on yesterday! Work only possible through collaboration with Sean Jewell and
@daniela_witten
1
4
23
0
3
16
fantastic news! nobody deserves this more!!!
This happened today :) The lab' first R01. It all seemed like an uphill battle when COVID shut us down days after we got keys to the lab. Incredibly grateful to the students and techs and who helped make this happen.
45
7
373
1
0
15
if you are interested in dopamine, stress, and resilience, check out
@lindsaywillmore
thread!
(sooo fun to work with
@lindsaywillmore
@Neurrriot
)
✨ Finally out 💪🐁 our work on how behavioural and dopaminergic responses to stress relate to resilience
🧵⬇️
12
74
347
0
2
16
why did
#arya
say that she's not returning to winterfell?? is her
#cersei
mission a suicide mission, or can someone come up with a happier explanation??
#cantwait
#dontkillarya
5
0
15
During chronic social stress, opposite correlates of aggressor proximity in dopamine (DA) terminals in nucleus accumbens (NAc) vs tail of striatum (TS)
1
5
14
excited to discuss this awesome preprint from
@BenSaunders
@triciajanak
in my upper level undergrad seminar this week
1
0
15