ABSTRACT
Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are rapidly gaining popularity in translational neuroscience and behavioral research. Physiological similarity to mammals, ease of genetic manipulations, sensitivity to pharmacological and genetic factors, robust behavior, low cost, and potential for high-throughput screening contribute to the growing utility of zebrafish models in this field. Understanding zebrafish behavioral phenotypes provides important insights into neural pathways, physiological biomarkers, and genetic underpinnings of normal and pathological brain function. Novel zebrafish paradigms continue to appear with an encouraging pace, thus necessitating a consistent terminology and improved understanding of the behavioral repertoire. What can zebrafish 'do', and how does their altered brain function translate into behavioral actions? To help address these questions, we have developed a detailed catalog of zebrafish behaviors (Zebrafish Behavior Catalog, ZBC) that covers both larval and adult models. Representing a beginning of creating a more comprehensive ethogram of zebrafish behavior, this effort will improve interpretation of published findings, foster cross-species behavioral modeling, and encourage new groups to apply zebrafish neurobehavioral paradigms in their research. In addition, this glossary creates a framework for developing a zebrafish neurobehavioral ontology, ultimately to become part of a unified animal neurobehavioral ontology, which collectively will contribute to better integration of biological data within and across species.
Subject(s)
Behavior, Animal , Zebrafish/physiology , Animals , Female , Larva/growth & development , Larva/physiology , Male , Nervous System Physiological Phenomena , Sex Characteristics , Terminology as Topic , Zebrafish/growth & developmentABSTRACT
Experimental models are an important tool for the study of biological mechanisms of psychiatric disorders. Although encouraging progress has been made in biological psychiatry of affective disorders, there remain numerous methodological, conceptual, and translational challenges in this field. Mounting clinical data support the view that psychiatric disorders as spectra, rather than as discrete or isolated illnesses. This requires new theories as well as new animal paradigms for "integrative" modeling of psychiatric disorders and their spectra. Here we discuss recent "integrative" experimental models and concepts that promise to advance translational research of affective disorders.
Subject(s)
Disease Models, Animal , Mood Disorders/genetics , Mood Disorders/psychology , Social Environment , Animals , Brain/physiopathology , Epigenesis, Genetic/genetics , Genetic Predisposition to Disease/genetics , Genotype , Humans , Mice , Mice, Knockout , Models, Genetic , Mood Disorders/physiopathology , Phenotype , Rats , ResearchABSTRACT
The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is emerging as a promising model organism for experimental studies of stress and anxiety. Here we further validate zebrafish models of stress by analyzing how environmental and pharmacological manipulations affect their behavioral and physiological phenotypes. Experimental manipulations included exposure to alarm pheromone, chronic exposure to fluoxetine, acute exposure to caffeine, as well as acute and chronic exposure to ethanol. Acute (but not chronic) alarm pheromone and acute caffeine produced robust anxiogenic effects, including reduced exploration, increased erratic movements and freezing behavior in zebrafish tested in the novel tank diving test. In contrast, ethanol and fluoxetine had robust anxiolytic effects, including increased exploration and reduced erratic movements. The behavior of several zebrafish strains was also quantified to ascertain differences in their behavioral profiles, revealing high-anxiety (leopard, albino) and low-anxiety (wild type) strains. We also used LocoScan (CleverSys Inc.) video-tracking tool to quantify anxiety-related behaviors in zebrafish, and dissect anxiety-related phenotypes from locomotor activity. Finally, we developed a simple and effective method of measuring zebrafish physiological stress responses (based on a human salivary cortisol assay), and showed that alterations in whole-body cortisol levels in zebrafish parallel behavioral indices of anxiety. Collectively, our results confirm zebrafish as a valid, reliable, and high-throughput model of stress and affective disorders.
