Searching for the social brain in a model organism: unveiling the neural circuitry underlying social cognition in zebrafish

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Publication . Nunes, Ana Rita; Ruhl, Nathan; Winberg, Svante; Oliveira, Rui Filipe

Zebrafish are an established model organism in developmental and behavioral neuroscience, also recently emerging as an excellent model to study social behavior. Zebrafish are highly social, forming groups (shoals) with structured social relationships, dominance hierarchies and overt territoriality. Moreover, social behavior in zebrafish exhibits considerable plasticity both within- (i.e., as a context-dependent behavior) and between individuals (e.g., sex-differences, personality and coping styles) of the same strain, as well as between strains. This richness and plasticity of social behavior, together with the genetic tools available to visualize and manipulate neural circuits in zebrafish places it in the forefront of studying the neurobiological mechanisms underlying complex social behavior. Here, we review the cognitive abilities involved in social behavior, as well as the different functional classes of social behavior present in zebrafish and their variation. We also highlight recent ground-breaking methodological developments in the field, including automated image-based tracking and classification of behavior coupled with video-animated social stimuli, which collectively foster the development of future high-throughput screens of zebrafish social phenotypes.

2017Book part

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Oxytocin receptor signaling modulates novelty recognition but not social preference in zebrafish

Publication . Ribeiro, Diogo; Nunes, Ana Rita; Gligsberg, Michael; Anbalagan, Savani; Levkowitz, Gil; Oliveira, Rui

Sociality is a complex phenomenon that involves the individual's motivation to approach their conspecifics, along with social cognitive functions that enable individuals to interact and survive. The nonapeptide oxytocin (OXT) is known to regulate sociality in many species. However, the role of OXT in specific aspects of sociality is still not well understood. In the present study we investigated the contribution of the OXT receptor (OXTR) signaling in two different aspects of zebrafish social behavior: social preference, by measuring their motivation to approach a shoal of conspecifics, and social recognition, by measuring their ability to discriminate between a novel and familiar fish, using a mutant zebrafish lacking a functional OXTR. Although oxtr mutant zebrafish displayed normal attraction to a shoal of conspecifics, they exhibited reduced social recognition. We further investigated if this effect would be social-domain specific by replacing conspecific fish by objects. Although no differences were observed in object approach, oxtr mutant fish also exhibited impaired object recognition. Our findings suggest that OXTR signaling regulates a more general memory recognition of familiar vs. novel entities, not only in social but also in a non-social domain, in zebrafish.

2020Journal article

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