Zebrafish, a Potential Novel Research Tool for the Analysis and Modeling of Anxiety

Gerlai, Robert

doi:10.5772/24100

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 99 publications

(106 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is not a simple question to address for two main reasons. One, the zebrafish has been shown to possess a rich antipredatory (fear/anxiety response) behavioral repertoire that is suspected to be context and aversive stimulus specific [72,76]. In other words, depending on numerous features of the environment and depending on the type and strength of the aversive (fear or anxiety inducing) stimulus, zebrafish may respond differently.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Effects of Buspirone in Juvenile Zebrafish of Two Different Genetic Backgrounds

Abozaid

2022

Toxics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Anxiety continues to represent a major unmet medical need. Despite the availability of numerous anxiolytic drugs, a large proportion of patients do not respond well to current pharmacotherapy, or their response diminishes with chronic drug application. To discover novel compounds and to investigate the mode of action of anxiolytic drugs, animal models have been proposed. The zebrafish is a novel animal model in this research. It is particularly appropriate, as it has evolutionarily conserved features, and drug administration can be employed in a non-invasive manner by immersing the fish into the drug solution. The first step in the analysis of anxiolytic drugs with zebrafish is to test reference compounds. Here, we investigate the effects of buspirone hydrochloride, an anxiolytic drug often employed in the human clinic. We utilize two genetically distinct populations of zebrafish, ABSK, derived from the quasi-inbred AB strain, and WT, a genetically heterogeneous wild-type population. We placed juvenile (10–13-day, post-fertilization, old) zebrafish singly in petri dishes containing one of four buspirone concentrations (0 mg/L control, 5 mg/L, 20 mg/L or 80 mg/L) for 1 h, with each fish receiving a single exposure to one concentration, a between subject experimental design. Subsequently, we recorded the behavior of the zebrafish for 30 min using video-tracking. Buspirone decreased distance moved, number of immobility episodes and thigmotaxis, and it increased immobility duration and turn angle in a quasi-linear dose dependent but genotype independent manner. Although it is unclear whether these changes represent anxiolysis in zebrafish, the results demonstrate that behavioral analysis of juvenile zebrafish may be a sensitive and simple way to quantify the effects of human anxiolytic drugs.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Behavioral Effects of Buspirone in Juvenile Zebrafish of Two Different Genetic Backgrounds

Abozaid

2022

Toxics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Precise control of odor concentration and dynamic is crucial for reproducible experiments, since it influences odor detection and valence [43]. Unlike studies in terrestrial animals, where the delivery of airborne chemicals is controlled by olfactometers and measured by photoionization detectors [44,45], measuring and rapidly clearing odors in the turbulent aquatic medium has proven challenging [46]. Therefore, aquatic studies often confine the stimulus within the arena: in two-current choice flumes [29,30], or using point source delivery [7][8][9]31], which complicates the calculation of odor detection threshold and results in different odor exposure duration between fish.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stimulus-specific behavioral responses of zebrafish to a large range of odors exhibit individual variability

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Odor-driven behaviors such as feeding, mating, and predator avoidance are crucial for animal survival. The neural pathways processing these behaviors have been well characterized in a number of species, and involve the activity of diverse brain regions following stimulation of the olfactory bulb by specific odors. However, while the zebrafish olfactory circuitry is well understood, a comprehensive characterization linking odor-driven behaviors to specific odors is needed to better relate olfactory computations to animal responses. Results: Here, we used a medium-throughput setup to measure the swimming trajectories of 10 zebrafish in response to 17 ecologically relevant odors. By selecting appropriate locomotor metrics, we constructed ethograms systematically describing odor-induced changes in the swimming trajectory. We found that adult zebrafish reacted to most odorants using different behavioral programs and that a combination of a few relevant behavioral metrics enabled us to capture most of the variance in these innate odor responses. We observed that individual components of natural food and alarm odors do not elicit the full behavioral response. Finally, we show that zebrafish blood elicits prominent defensive behaviors similar to those evoked by skin extract and activates spatially overlapping olfactory bulb domains. Conclusion: Altogether, our results highlight a prominent intra-and inter-individual variability in zebrafish odordriven behaviors and identify a small set of waterborne odors that elicit robust responses. Our behavioral setup and our results will be useful resources for future studies interested in characterizing innate olfactory behaviors in aquatic animals.

show abstract

“…All the above behavioral parameters have been employed in the analysis of behavioral responses of zebrafish to novel contexts, aversive versus appetitive cues. For example, most of these behaviors have been argued to be a measure of fear and anxiety in zebrafish ( Ahmed et al, 2012 ; Blaser and Rosemberg, 2012 ; Kalueff et al, 2013 ; Qin et al, 2014 ; Gerlai and Tran, 2016 ; Gerlai, 2020 , 2013 , 2011 , 2010 ; Ro et al, 2021 ; Facciol et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The zebrafish is a highly social species. In their natural environment, these fish form shoals ranging from two to several hundred individuals, an important adaptive strategy that reduces predation risk and increases foraging efficiency and mating success (Miller and Gerlai, 2011 ; Shams et al, 2015 , 2017a , b ; Movva et al, 2017 ; Tunbak et al, 2020 ; Stevens et al, 2021 ). Although zebrafish are highly social and shoal in the laboratory too, these fish do not live in confined, cave-like environments, but inhabit open, spacious bodies of water ( Ramsay et al, 2006 ; Reed and Jennings, 2011 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis

Shishis

Tsang

2022

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The zebrafish has been employed in several fields of biology due to its translational relevance and its simplicity and ease of maintenance. As a result, zebrafish are kept in thousands of laboratories around the world. Current industry standards favor keeping the largest possible number of fish in the smallest possible volume of water to increase efficiency and reduce costs. However, physiological and psychological stress resulting from such crowding may impact a variety of phenotypes, from brain function and behavior to cardiovascular function and cancer. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what constitutes an optimal housing environment for the zebrafish, e.g., no systematic analyses have been performed to test the role of housing density and tank volume despite recent sporadic reports implying negative effects of the standard practice of crowding. Here, we conduct the first proof of concept analysis examining the potential impact of housing density and tank volume on the behavior of zebrafish. We randomly assigned adult zebrafish to one of three tank sizes (1.5, 10, or 50 L) with one of three housing densities (1, 2, or 4 fish/L), a 3 × 3 between subject experimental design, and maintained the fish in their corresponding condition for 2 weeks. Subsequently, we tested the behavior of the fish singly in a novel open tank for 12 min and quantified several of their swim path parameters using a video-tracking system. We found significant additive and interacting effects of tank size and/or housing density on swim path parameters including immobility, swim speed, turn angle, and distance to bottom and to stimulus. Although we had only three fish densities and three tank sizes and we did not explore the effects of more extreme conditions and although the interpretation of the above behavioral effects is speculative at this point, the results already demonstrate that both tank size and housing density exerts significant effects on the zebrafish and thus should be considered in zebrafish husbandry.

show abstract

Zebrafish, a Potential Novel Research Tool for the Analysis and Modeling of Anxiety

Cited by 6 publications

References 99 publications

Behavioral Effects of Buspirone in Juvenile Zebrafish of Two Different Genetic Backgrounds

Behavioral Effects of Buspirone in Juvenile Zebrafish of Two Different Genetic Backgrounds

Stimulus-specific behavioral responses of zebrafish to a large range of odors exhibit individual variability

The effect of fish density and tank size on the behavior of adult zebrafish: A systematic analysis

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About