Dr. Talia Lerner
Assistant Professor Department of Physiology, Northwestern University College of Medicine
Postdoctoral Fellow Stanford University
PhD in Neuroscience UCSF
Becoming a scientist takes more than just a love for science; it takes bravery. Throughout her career, Dr. Talia Lerner has had to take risks, push through rejection, and battle the challenges of learning something new at every turn. Her bravery has led to her current success as a principal investigator, compassionate mentor, and Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Talia was always interested in science, but as an undergraduate at Yale, she felt unsure about exactly what kind of science she was most drawn to. Talia briefly volunteered in a microbiology lab and learned two things: first, she definitely wanted to be a scientist and second, she absolutely did not want to study microbiology! She decided to major in biochemistry and after perusing the papers of the Nobel prize-winning synaptic physiologist Thomas Südof—like every 20-year-old does in their free time—she became increasingly curious about the brain. No matter how obviously brilliant and motivated she was, Talia was shy and felt intimidated to ask to join research labs. When she mustered up the courage to ask to join a lab at Yale led by one of Südof’s proteges, she came face-to-face with the rejection she feared. However, they gave her a referral to the lab of Dr. David Zenisek, where she ultimately completed her senior thesis studying the biochemical basis of ribbon synapses in the retina. Later in her career, Talia still thinks about this experience and it reminds her not only how scary it is to reach out to a lab, but also how important responding with compassion can be.
When applying to graduate programs, Talia decided to target neuroscience because it was broader and more interdisciplinary than biochemistry and she was drawn to the possibilities of what she could learn. Even though she was rejected from several programs due to her lack of a pure neuroscience background, she eventually chose the University of California at San Francisco for her graduate work.
Once again, Talia faced a sea of possibility. She hadn’t taken any classes in neuroscience at Yale so she was starting from square one. Talia took full advantage of her rotations, spending time in four different labs before choosing to do her thesis research in the lab of Dr. Anatol Kreitzer. At the time she joined, the Kreitzer lab was brand new at UCSF and Talia was going to be Anatol’s first ever graduate student. Joining a new lab can be a big risk: what was Anatol’s mentorship style? Did the lab have enough resources? Would she be able to investigate the questions that interested her? Once again, Talia’s bravery paid off. Because she was the only student in the lab, she got nearly unlimited mentorship time and witnessed a lab being built from the ground up, an experience that would be invaluable later on in her own career.
Despite coming from a non-neuro background, she soon became an expert in electrophysiology as she studied synaptic plasticity in the dopamine striatal system. Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter that plays a key role in movement. Disturbances in dopamine in the indirect pathway in the striatal system can lead to problems with motor control, like the stiffness many patients experience in Parkinson’s disease. In her PhD, Talia studied how two different receptors in this pathway, the dopamine D2 receptor and the adenosine A2A receptor, balance each other out, ultimately determining when excitatory synapses onto indirect pathway striatal neurons are weakened and activity in the indirect pathway decreased. Decreasing activity in the indirect pathway can improve movement ability, and her results provide insight into an important mechanism that can potentially be used to treat movement disorders. Thesis completed in the Kreitzer Lab, Talia set her sights on a dream of one day being a PI herself. The next step was to pick the perfect postdoc.
In 2012, Talia began a postdoc at Stanford in the lab of Dr. Karl Deisseroth. Although the Deisseroth lab had studied the dopamine system, among many other brain systems, this lab was much larger and studied these systems with an exciting variety of cutting-edge techniques. These techniques included optogenetics, CLARITY (a brand-new technique to make tissue transparent) and fiber photometry (a technology to measure neural activity which, at that point, was in its earliest stages of development). Coming into this new environment, Talia was challenged to learn all of these new techniques. On top of that, she was now one of about 50 people in the lab so she had to adapt to working independently. In her postdoctoral work, she surveyed dopamine neuron heterogeneity in the dorsal striatum both ex vivo and in vivo using techniques from the lab like CLARITY and fiber photometry. She found that dopamine neurons in different parts of the striatum communicate fundamentally different kinds of information and subsequently produce different behaviors. Following her passion for studying dopamine and inspired by questions about how striatal dopamine circuits might be modulating behavior, Talia looked towards a faculty position.
However, when she started interviewing at universities, Talia realized that her partner was not supportive of her career and her marriage had taken a turn for the worse. At that point in her life, Talia was not only finishing her postdoctoral work and flying all over the country for faculty interviews, she was also caring for her newborn son. The lack of support from her partner was unsustainable and she faced an enormous decision. “I was really scared of not just being alone and raising a child alone, but ruining my chance at a career in academia, especially at this critical transition stage.” In the face of terrifying uncertainty, Talia decided to leave her marriage. She accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at Northwestern, packed up her and her son’s life in California, and started her new chapter. Since arriving in Chicago with a squirming toddler, Talia has built a successful lab on her own. She has also remarried a wonderful, supportive partner, with whom she has a second child. Having made it through to the other side of this difficult period in her life, Talia believes that the experience made her a stronger, more compassionate person. “Unfortunate circumstances happen,” she reflects, “and it’s possible to overcome unfortunate circumstances; it’s not that everything has to go perfectly otherwise you’ve ruined things.”
Talia’s lab at Northwestern has five graduate students, the first of which just graduated. Her research investigates the biological bases of habitual behavior and habit formation in the dopamine system, funded by several grants including the NIH Early Innovator Award. As a mentor, Talia spends time reflecting on how she herself felt at each stage in a research career; young and excited, intimidated, daunted by risk and independence, or going through unknown personal challenges. Running her lab, she practices compassion and appreciates individual differences in learning and working styles. She encourages students to take advantage of resources like free counseling and cultivate their hobbies, like she has with outdoor adventuring and painting. Lastly, she reminds us all that bravery is just as important as scientific skill, and taking risks can come with considerable professional, as well as personal, payoff.
Follow Talia on Twitter, and find out more about her her lab’s research here.
Listen to Nancy’s full interview with Talia on June 8th, 2021 below or wherever you get your podcasts!
