Lucy Tian

Year Entered MSTP: 2022

Prior Education

College:	Washington University, St. Louis
Degree:	BA, Neuroscience

Student Information

Mentor(s)	Stuber, Garret PhD Faculty Website »
Primary Department	Neuroscience

Current Research

Dopamine and Learning-Related Brain Circuit Dynamics

Lucy studies how neuromodulatory signals shape learning by altering neural circuit activity in the brain’s reward pathways. Using advanced in vivo imaging, she tracks the activity of thousands of individual neurons across learning with single-cell resolution. Simultaneous measurement of dopamine signaling reveals how distinct neuron populations are differentially modulated during behavior. Together, these observations offer a mechanistic view of how learning-related signals are distributed across neural circuits.