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Zijing Wu

@zijingwu.bsky.social
150 followers 332 following 18 posts

Dopamine heterogeneity and continual reinforcement learning NeuroAI PhD student at @mcgillu. @Mila_Quebec Prev: @GeorgiaTech @FlatironCCN.

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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Anyway, let’s celebrate! Clearly optogenetics impacts widely in both science and applications, including this very cool therapeutic application shared by @nicolecrust.bsky.social bsky.app/profile/nico...
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
And would those causal claims ultimately be expressed more naturally in math, than in words?
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Computational neuroscientists are theorizing with different modeling approaches. But to test it scientifically, what might the next breakthrough experimental technique look like - one that lets us make stronger causal claims about brain circuits underlying complex cognitive functions?
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
… it’s time-consuming and even infeasible to record and manipulate the full neuro network of interests so nobody have done the feast yet.
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
But if we think of the brain as a massively recurrent dynamical system - something like an RNN - it becomes difficult to say so. The effect of perturbing X can depend on the state of the rest of the network and recurrent interactions. And …
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This is great and leads to wonderful discoveries. But sometimes claims like ‘X is the causal factor’ are just made somewhere in the research presentation or downstream dissemination to peers and public.
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
In my learning: and just in behavioral system neuroscience, the technique is often used to establish causal claims like: X cells projecting to region Y causally contribute to function Z - with cell-type and projection specificity, as well as fine temporal precision.
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I’m taking a behavioral neuroscience graduate seminar (as an imposter) this fall. It’s even hard to pick one of the Nature/Science papers we’ve presented so far that did not use optogenetics!
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
A basic-basic-translational trifecta! A discovery in alga leads to a new technology that transforms both neuroscience research and leads to a brand new type of human therapy. I love that everyone in my feed is smiling this morning. Congrats, @deisseroth.bsky.social.
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COSYNE @cosynemeeting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
📢Have work to share with the computational and systems neuroscience community? Abstract submissions for #COSYNE2027 are now open. Deadline: 18 October 2026, 11:59 p.m. AoE Submit your abstract: www.cosyne.org/abstracts-su... #Neuroscience
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Paul Middlebrooks @braininspired.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I don't know if the Neuro-AI hype train is accelerating or calming down, but I do know it's in good hands with people like @dlevenstein.bsky.social. Looking forward to those sleeping AI models he's making, too. braininspired.co/podcast/245/
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Drew Schreiner @schreinerdrew.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Very useful, comprehensive catalogue of striatal cell types in mice and humans!
cell.com
Cross-species single-cell atlas of the striatum defines cell-type and subregion disease vulnerabilities
Single-nucleus RNA sequencing and spatial validation across human and mouse striatum define principles of neuronal specialization across cell types, subregions, and species. These findings lay the fou...
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Continual RL Workshop @continual-rl.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Rich Sutton delivered a talk in our workshop: 🎙️ Generate-and-test methods for Continual Learning 🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaJx...
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Continual RL Workshop @continual-rl.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Revisit our first invited talk of the afternoon session by David Abel @dabelcs.bsky.social: 🎙️ Where is Learning? 🎥 www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVZu... ✨ In this talk, David gave a simple general definition of an agent, and asked: where in such an agent does learning take place?
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Continual RL Workshop @continual-rl.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
The first contributed talk in our workshop was given by Lu Li on his work: 🎙️ The Three Regimes of Offline-to-Online Reinforcement Learning 🔗 openreview.net/forum?id=YTj...
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
So excited about my experience at RLC! I am thankful for the opportunity to present an oral at the @continual-rl.bsky.social on our dopamine-inspired CRL algorithm. It is a true dual-thesis effort my PhD has become, studying both dopamine & RL. Continuing this spiral NeuroAI effort is a mission.
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Caswell Barry @caswell.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Really excited about this work with the awesome Will de Cothi & Sarah Shipley, just out in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. We propose acetylcholine is an analogue of dopamine — tracking not reward prediction errors but state-transition prediction errors. doi.org/10.1038/s41583-026-01058-w
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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Realizing that the debates around the words we use to talk about AI: www.techpolicy.press/we-need-to-t... Are strikingly similar to the debates about the words we use to talk about emotion in animals: www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict... With the same trade-offs between precision and jargon.
thetransmitter.org
Emotion research has a communication conundrum
In 2025, the words we use to describe emotions matter, but their definitions are controversial. Here, I unpack the different positions in this space and the rationales behind them—and I invite 13…
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Anqi Wu @anqiwu.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
🧠We are looking for enthusiastic postdoctoral researchers working at the intersection of machine learning, neuroscience, and embodied intelligence. Please help spread the word! 🚀
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Continual RL Workshop @continual-rl.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Standard RL assumes a stable world. The real world may not. ♾ Introducing the Continual RL Workshop @rl-conference.bsky.social 2026, Montreal, Canada. 🤖 Agents that learn, adapt, and evolve under constant change. 🖼️ Site: sites.google.com/view/continu... 📄 Submit: sites.google.com/view/continu...
Tentative lineup
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Reinforcement Learning Conference @rl-conference.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
We have the keynote speakers for RLC2026 now! Thrilled to welcome Rika Antonova, Sheila McIlraith, Marc G. Bellemare, Danijar Hafner, Balaraman Ravindran! Details: rl-conference.cc/index.html The RL community is coming together this August in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Hope you make it!
rl-conference.cc
RLC 2026
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Satpreet (Sat) Singh @satpreetsingh.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Talk recordings from our CoSyNe 2026 workshop on Agent-based Models in Neuroscience are now online! Playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... RL agents and theory, interoception, biomechanical models connectome-constrained models, and more. #CoSyNe #NeuroAI #CompNeuro #RL #EmbodiedAI
youtube.com
CoSyNe 2026 Agents in Neuroscience Workshop - YouTube
https://neuro-agent-models.github.io/
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Alex Williams @itsneuronal.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Cosyne invited me to give a long tutorial (4 hours!) on methods to quantify differences high-d neural recordings across animals, brain regions, deep neural nets, etc. The recording is up on youtube. I hope it inspires more research on this fundamental topic! www.youtube.com/watch?v=n44x...
youtube.com
Cosyne 2026 - Cosyne Tutorial: Comparative Analysis of Neural Population Codes
YouTube video by Cosyne Talks
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Coming to @cosynemeeting.bsky.social for the third consecutive year now as a young researcher. First was exposure, second was following and a dive into the niche, now as a presenter sharing the work I genuinely love for its beauty and the field's in connecting so many interesting dots..
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Thanks to everyone who stopped by and for your interest in dopamine and RL!
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
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Drew Schreiner @schreinerdrew.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Cool basal ganglia preprints today! 2 on DA/ACh 1. @paulkramer.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 2. @arifahamid.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Motor learning @juangallego.bsky.social and @clopathlab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Excitatory nicotinic signaling drives action potential bursting in dopaminergic axons
Axons of dopamine (DA) neurons express nicotinic receptors (nAChRs) that have been shown to both facilitate and suppress striatal DA release, but the mechanisms underlying these opposing actions are u...
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Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all times, Yes, I teach it to students daily, and refer to it in lots of papers. Sorry. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...
open.substack.com
How I contributed to rejecting one of my favorite papers of all time
I believe we should talk about the mistakes we make.
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Paul Masset @paulmasset.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
I am recruiting graduate students for the experimental side of my lab @mcgill.ca for admission in Fall 2026! Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.
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Nicolas Tritsch @nictritsch.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Delighted to see this finally out: rdcu.be/eO9oW We tested whether brief striatal dopamine release events influence the vigor of skilled movements. Despite popular belief, we did not find any evidence linking rapid dopamine dynamics to motor vigor on a moment-by-moment basis.
rdcu.be
Subsecond dopamine fluctuations do not specify the vigor of ongoing actions
Nature Neuroscience - Liu and colleagues show that the vigor (that is, speed and amplitude) of dexterous movements is not controlled by ongoing fluctuations in extracellular dopamine within the...
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Paul Masset @paulmasset.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
First paper from the lab! We propose a model that separates estimation of odor concentration and presence and map it on olfactory bulb circuits Led by @chenjiang01.bsky.social and @mattyizhenghe.bsky.social joint work with @jzv.bsky.social and with @neurovenki.bsky.social @cpehlevan.bsky.social
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Chen Jiang @chenjiang01.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Excited to share that our work ‘Simultaneous detection and estimation in olfactory sensing’ with @mattyizhenghe.bsky.social, @neurovenki.bsky.social , @cpehlevan.bsky.social, @jzv.bsky.social and @paulmasset.bsky.social has been launched! 1/7
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Congrats Hafez!
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
This is one of the most outstanding examples of circuit understanding I've seen in a long time. The unification of theory and experiment is beautiful. When Malcolm presented this in my lab, the audience was cheering at the end, and one person shouted (non-ironically) "You did it!"
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Malcolm Campbell @malcolmgcampbell.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning? Read on to find out more! 🧵
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Thanks for sharing this exciting work! It seems the author's link has expired, so maybe it's worth updating? (Was able to find the paper myself 🙂)
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
Yes, finally! The bookmarking button is here for caching of both existing and future posts.
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
My biggest skill/life gains come when I’m unconscious of the external metering. Heavy reliance on external reward signals, neglecting the intrinsic drives and non-reward returns hamper long-horizon success in complex real life setting - a lose hypothesis - and what in part motivates #scicomm :)
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Tom Schaul @schaul.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today? Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels (guess who talked about which!)
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
It's a comprehensive examination across Marr's three levels - in conjunction with chapters on dopamine and psychiatric conditions - as Prof. @PeterDayan describes in the opening perspective, for 'the most important and most elusive molecule in the brain.'
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
What's even better than a great review is a volume of them! So excited to learn that The Handbook of Dopamine is out!
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Another RL in rodents paper. This one shows synchronized responses in cerebellum and SNr during learning - definitely feels like the whole-brain aspect of RL needs more exploration like this! www.jneurosci.org/content/45/2... #neuroscience 🧪
jneurosci.org
Synergistic Reinforcement Learning by Cooperation of the Cerebellum and Basal Ganglia
The cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia are essential for flexible learning in mammals. Although traditionally thought to operate under different learning rules, recent evidence suggests th...
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Paul Masset @paulmasset.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Our work with Pablo Tano, @hyunggoo-kim.bsky.social Athar Malik, Alexandre Pouget and @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social exploring how dopamine neurons could enable multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain is out in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain - Nature
Individual dopaminergic neurons encode future rewards over distinct temporal horizons.
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Two papers out today on RL in the dopaminergic neurons of the midbrain of mice (one from McGill's new PI @paulmasset.bsky.social). Both papers demonstrate heterogeneity in discount factors! www.nature.com/articles/s41... nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠📈 🧪 #NeuroAI
nature.com
Multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain - Nature
Individual dopaminergic neurons encode future rewards over distinct temporal horizons.
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Paul Masset @paulmasset.bsky.social · 18/02/2025
Honoured to have been selected as a #SloanFellow Thankful for all the support from family, mentors, collaborators, colleagues and students along the way! @sloanfoundation.bsky.social
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Zijing Wu @zijingwu.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
What a great thread! Repost for bookmarking. A real bookmarking button is needed here as great content and convo are emerging at scale now.
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Paul Masset @paulmasset.bsky.social · 09/11/2024
I am recruiting graduate students for my lab @mcgillu.bsky.social for admission in Fall 2025! Get in touch if you're interested in how brain circuits implement distributed computation, including dopamine-based distributed RL and probabilistic representations.
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