Navegando por Autor "Gerlai, Robert"
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Artigo Acute and chronic alcohol administration: effects on performance of zebrafish in a latent learning task(Elsevier, 2015) Luchiari, Ana Carolina; Salajan, Diana C.; Gerlai, RobertAlcohol abuse is a major medical problem. Zebrafish have been proposed to model alcohol related human disorders. Alcohol impairs learning and memory. Here, we analyze the effects of alcohol on performance of zebrafish in a recently developed latent learning paradigm. We employ a 2 × 3 × 2 experimental design (chronic × acute alcohol treatment × path blocked). The latent learning task had two phases: one, 30 min long exploration trials (16 days, 1 trial/day) with left or right path of a complex maze blocked, and two, a subsequent probe trial with all paths open leading to a goal box that now contained stimulus fish. During the 16 days each fish received one of two chronic treatments: freshwater or 0.50% (v/v%) alcohol. Subsequently, fish were immersed for 1 h in one of the following solutions: 0.00 (freshwater), 0.50% or 1.00% alcohol, the acute challenge. Behavior of fish was recorded during the probe trial that commenced immediately after the acute treatment. Path choices, latency to leave the start box and to enter the goal box, time spent in the goal box, distance traveled, and duration of freezing were quantified. We found that acute exposure to 1.00% alcohol after chronic freshwater disrupted learning performance, so did exposure to freshwater after chronic alcohol treatment (withdrawal). We also found exposure to chronic alcohol to diminish the effect of subsequent acute alcohol suggesting development of tolerance. Our results demonstrate that analysis of learning performance of zebrafish allows detection of alcoholinduced functional changes. The simplicity and scalability of the employed task also imply the utility of the zebrafish in high throughput drug screensArtigo Associative learning in the multichamber tank: a new learning paradigm for zebrafish(Elsevier, 2016-06-21) Fernandes, Yohaan M.; Rampersad, Mindy; Luchiari, Ana Carolina; Gerlai, RobertThe zebrafish has been gaining prominence in the field of behavioural brain research as this species offers a good balance between system complexity and practical simplicity. While the number of studies examining the behaviour of zebrafish has exponentially increased over the past decade, the need is still substantial for paradigms capable of assessing cognitive and mnemonic characteristics of this species. Here we describe and utilize a novel visual discrimination task with which we evaluated acquisition of CS (colour)-US (sight of conspecifics) association in adult zebrafish. We report significant acquisition of CS-US association indicated by the increased time the fish spent in and the increased frequency of visits of the target chamber during a probe trial in the absence of reward. Given the simplicity of the apparatus and procedure, we conclude that the new task may be employed to assay learning and memory in adult zebrafish in an efficient manner