Lily Zou
@LilyZou1
Followers
205
Following
1K
Media
16
Statuses
321
Neuroscience PhD @usc Hires lab•massive @arsenal fan
Joined August 2013
What is acetylcholine doing in our brain? Does it control attention? React to our senses? Predict the future? Help move our body? Something else, or all of the above? Our new preprint https://t.co/wMPbRzcZEC provides insights that may surprise you! 🧵👇
2
11
58
Check out our preprint on a new method for anterograde tracing of neural circuits from genetically determined neurons. https://t.co/PhNqSIU5o3 ATLAS mediates tracing that is non-toxic, monosynaptic, activity-dependent, and without any retrograde spread.
11
114
481
Attn hearing researchers: Eaton-Peabody labs at Mass Eye and Ear is searching for a new faculty member. Come join a large and collegial group of researchers studying hearing from the external ear to cortex!
0
7
16
Looking for postdoctoral fellows to join the McCormick lab, University of Oregon. Working in systems neuroscience on cortical/thalamic activity, attention, performance and state using the latest in optical/ electrical techniques. Please retweet! https://t.co/xAZakaammU
neurojobs.sfn.org
Join a great research team using state of the art techniques to reveal the cellular/network mechanisms of waking state-dependent activity in the brain
5
33
49
Super stoked to drop our first preprint of 2022!! How does Acetylcholine modulate the neural dynamics in downstream targets? https://t.co/zTRKmJWpI3 Led by the brilliant @ekimchi, we reveal how ACh can modulate neural representations and reward-seeking. (THREAD!) 1/10
biorxiv.org
Basal forebrain cholinergic neurons are thought to modulate how organisms process and respond to environmental stimuli through impacts on arousal, attention, memory, and motivated behavior. We...
3
36
143
Powerful piece by Yuh Nung Jan that pulls at the heartstrings of my own confusing racial identity. Underrepresentation of Asian awardees of United States biomedical research prizes: Cell
cell.com
The lack of racial diversity among the winners of United States biomedical research prizes reflects a chronic problem of the underappreciation of certain groups of biomedical scientists. Asians...
3
16
77
Please RT: Exciting in person 2 day Learning and Memory Symposium at UCLA on April 18 and 19 2022. Registration required but FREE: https://t.co/uNQVmfys1Z
5
95
218
Excited to announce our paper mapping synapse changes in the zebrafish brain with memory formation https://t.co/ofMmwnCeeu. Congrats to a great team: William Dempsey, Zhuowei Du, @AnnaNadtochiy, and @ColtonDaneSmith, Scott Fraser, Carl Kesselman, and Thai Truong.
pnas.org
Defining the structural and functional changes in the nervous system underlying learning and memory represents a major challenge for modern neurosc...
2
10
43
And Happy New Year from our lab to yours!!! We don't have an updated lab photo @AndrewHires 😂 So two photos from pre-covid time✌️
0
1
5
In summary, we see the primary drivers of acetylcholine release in S1 as directed motor actions to gather information and act upon it. More details, including other potential triggers of acetylcholine, are in the preprint. We’d appreciate your feedback! https://t.co/wMPbRzcZEC
biorxiv.org
Numerous cognitive functions including attention, learning, and plasticity are influenced by the dynamic patterns of acetylcholine release across the brain. How acetylcholine mediates these functions...
1
0
7
This is exactly what we saw, a selective increase in the acetylcholine response to the first lick in a trial across training, which parallels the emergence of a choice signalling meaning to the lick.
1
0
4
This result leads to a prediction. First licks in naive mice that don’t understand the task would not cause a big acetylcholine release. Their response would look like any other lick, because the mouse would not yet be making a deliberate choice.
1
0
4
What’s different about the first lick? We think it's that the first lick in a trial is a choice signalling action. The mouse investigates, decides, then acts on the decision with a lick. Follow-up licks have little cortical involvement (see Bollu 2021, @jesseGlab).
1
0
4
Question #2: Trials with licks have more acetylcholine release, but is every lick the same? We lined up the acetylcholine to the time of the first lick and compared the signal size to the number of licks in a trial. The first lick gave a big increase, others added a bit more.
1
0
2
To our surprise, the sound didn’t do anything directly. Acetylcholine only increased if the mouse moved their whiskers in response to the sound. The more they moved (we sorted by this in the heatmap), the bigger the release.
1
0
4
On every trial type, acetylcholine went up at least a little bit, but on trials with licks (Hit and False Alarm), it went up a lot more. That leads to 2 questions. Question 1: Why did we see at least some release on all trial types, did the sound of the pole drive acetylcholine?
1
0
4
Most of the time, when the pole was presented to expert mice, acetylcholine quickly increased right afterwards. But not every time. Why???
1
0
1
To do so, we genetically expressed a fluorescent sensor for acetylcholine (GRAB-ACh3.0) developed by @YulongLiLab in S1. Then we recorded fluorescence changes during the training with a two-photon microscope peering into S1 through a glass window.
1
0
2
We trained mice to find a pole with a whisker, while precisely recording their behavior as they learned. We simultaneously recorded the patterns of acetylcholine release in S1, a part of the brain that processes whisker touch and movement info.
1
0
4