Protocol for controlling visual experience during zebrafish development and modulation of motor behavior.

Sensory experience instructs neurodevelopment and refines sensory processing. Here, we describe a minimally invasive protocol to immobilize zebrafish during early development to control visual experience. We describe how to prepare larvae for embedding in agarose at two separate timepoints in development. Then we describe how to build a behavior rig and use software to track zebrafish behaviors. Finally, we detail analyzing behavioral data to validate the protocol and determine outcomes of sensory dependent plasticity. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Hageter et al. (2023).1.

Poorer phonetic perceivers show greater benefit in phonetic-phonological speech learning.

PURPOSE: Previous research has demonstrated that native English speakers can learn lexical tones in word context (pitch-to-word learning), to an extent. However, learning success depends on learners' pre-training sensitivity to pitch patterns. The aim of this study was to determine whether lexical pitch-pattern training given before lexical training could improve learning and whether or not the extent of improvement depends on pre-training pitch-pattern sensitivity. METHOD: Learners with high and low pitch-pattern sensitivity were given training on lexical pitch patterns before lexical training. RESULTS: It was found that such training resulted in better learning than lexical training alone, primarily in learners with low pre-training pitch-pattern sensitivity. CONCLUSION: These data support the importance of considering individual aptitudes when developing training and also the notion of phonetic-phonological-lexical continuity in word learning.