Erica Townsend, PhD

I'm honored to receive the Penn AI Fellowship with support from @upenndddi.bsky.social! The fellowship supports my research on computational models of perception and cognitive bias. Specifically, we want to understand when and why both brains and AI systems are susceptible to cognitive biases.

Alex Pretti was a scientist.

Thousands of Minnesotans marched in downtown Minneapolis to protest ICE. The wind chill was 30 below during the march.

Hundreds of businesses closed their doors Friday in support of the protest as activists urged Minnesotans to abstain from economic activity.

I’m on it 🫡

YESSS congrats to you and superstar six 🩷

The serotonin 1B receptor is required for some of the behavioral effects of psilocybin in mice - Molecular Psychiatry Molecular Psychiatry - The serotonin 1B receptor is required for some of the behavioral effects of psilocybin in mice

New paper drop! 🧠💊 Our new paper out in Molecular Psychiatry shows that the serotonin 1B receptor is important for the neural and antidepressant/anxiolytic behavioral responses to psilocybin in mice.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

super awesome!! congrats to Oyku and Noah :)

Dorsolateral striatal acetylcholine reorganizes neural ensembles to anticipate threat Adaptive behavior requires flexible encoding of emotional valence. Although striatal acetylcholine (ACh) signaling is critical for reinforcement learning, its contribution to aversive learning has rem...

🚨New Kutlu Lab preprint! Excited to share our latest work led by Oyku Dinckol and Noah Wenger.
🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We find that ACh shapes DLS neural ensembles for outcome learning but is biased toward signaling threats over rewards 👇

thank you kenny very cool 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

thank you!! :)

special thanks to my advisor, (the blueskyless) kyle smith and to my wonderful former student @danielagarrod.bsky.social for making this project happen!! 🩷

very excited to share some of the final bits of work from my PhD! 🎉 we find that phasic DA in the accumbens simultaneously tracks persistent motivation towards reward cues in addition to new learning (but maybe not RPE?!) in sign-tracking rats. check out the preprint below!

a little girl is crying while holding her fist in the air and the word exciting is on the bottom . ALT: a little girl is crying while holding her fist in the air and the word exciting is on the bottom .

Huge congrats to Gio Lab postdoc Dr @ericastownsend.bsky.social on her poster award at Temple’s Department of Neural Sciences Research Day!

#JNeurosci: A functional MRI study from @maechlermarvin.bsky.social‬ et al. identify brain regions that might be the source of hemifield-specific capacity limits in attentional tracking of multiple moving objects.
vist.ly/3n7a9wt

well its officially official - I graduated yesterday! 🎓 super honored to have also received my department’s promise award in brain science research. pumped to start my postdoc next month!!

Hemifield Specificity of Attention Response Functions during Multiple-Object Tracking The difficulty of tracking multiple moving objects among identical distractors increases with the number of tracked targets. Previous research has shown that the number of targets tracked (i.e., load)...

I am excited to announce (belatedly) that my dissertation’s final chapter has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience! doi.org/10.1523/JNEU...

thanks Talia!! it was so lovely to have you as part of my committee 😄 I hope we cross paths again!

thanks Kenny! 💚

PhDone let’s goooo!!! thank you🩷

defended my dissertation and officially became Dr. Townsend yesterday! 🍾 feeling so much gratitude for my friends and family, my wonderful advisor, the bluesky-less Kyle Smith, and the many mentors & colleagues who supported me along the way 🩷

check it out here and feel free to shoot me a dm if you need a copy of the pdf! :) learnmem.cshlp.org/content/32/3...

we find discrepancies between automated measures (eg lever pressing) of sign-tracking and the true underlying behavior. we don't think you should trash these types of measures altogether, but we do think it's a good idea to start doing some video analysis for the most accurate portrayal of behavior.

the cover of learning and memory's march issue with a beautiful illustration of a rat playing pavlovian dance dance revolution. art by angela shang

despite the horrors, I will continue to share and engage with science without fear!! thus, I'm very happy to share my recent article out in Learning & Memory. I'm so proud of this work. it's been my little passion project for some time now. a student of mine, Angela Shang, even made the cover art!

We are organizing a Stand Up for Science rally at Dartmouth College!

When: This Friday, March 7th, at 12pm (noon)

Where: Center of the Dartmouth Green

just when i thought it wouldnt get no sicker ….

Step 1) find your rep

www.congress.gov/members/find...

Step 2) send an email or call their office

Step 3) tell them that federal spending on scientific advancement is the best hope we have to “win against china” or whatever these guys are obsessed with these days

NIH In Your State - United For Medical Research Select a state on the map to see the impact of NIH funding across America.

I just reached out to my senators about the NIH situation. If you need to find out how much impact NIH has in your state in terms of dollars in and their economic impact here's a link: www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-...

i actually would love to be as at peace as she is in the second photo lol

TT28 with is the place to be in DC! Come learn about how serotonin modulates reward-related DMS calcium activity.

ugh what a CUTIE