Adult zebrafish as a model organism for assessing the effects of hallucinogenic drugs on behaviors / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Aims To establish several behavioral paradigms to characterize the psychotropic effects of hallucinogens which ze-brafish was utilized as a model animal, and then to investigate the effects of potent hallucinogenic drugs on these models. Methods With the video record and track system, the behavior was recorded and quantified automatically. In the experiments, the bottom dwelling test, social behavior and mirror test were performed to test the hallucinogenic effects of drugs. Metham-phetamine (METH, 2 mg·L-1) and ketamine (20 mg·L-1) were selected as experimental challenges. The 30 min pre-treat-ment time was chosen based on our prior experience in zebrafish models. Results Compared to the normal group, in dwelling test, acute exposure of zebrafish to METH and ketamine de-creased transitions significantly, and in mirror reflection test, the drug-treated fish changed the preference for mirror zone, and ex-hibited aggressive for their mirror images. The pretreatment of METH and ketamine significantly reduced the contact durations, and the ketamine inhibited the contact frequency each other, the results indicated that the social interaction of zebrafish was im-paired. Conclusion The results confirm high sensitivity of ze-brafish models to hallucinogenic compounds with complex behav-ioral and physiological effects.