Add a variable to the author pane module to make it show twitter messages for that author. Have basic code, need some help

In the author pane module you can add custom functionality to make it show other things besides what it already does. I found a post on the forum that had this

<?php
/**
* Implementation of hook_preprocess_author_pane().
*/
function twitter_preprocess_author_pane(&$variables) {
 // Add your variable(s) like this:
 $variables['twitter_VARIABLENAME'] = twitter_FUNCTION($variables['account']);
}
?>

can someone help me figure out what variable and function I need from twitter to go in here?

Thanks,
Becky