Publications by authors named "Barbara Fontana"

Article Synopsis
  • Environmental factors, particularly environmental enrichment (EE), influence the development and severity of neuropsychiatric disorders, especially externalizing disorders that involve impulsive and aggressive behaviors.
  • The study focused on zebrafish with a gene linked to impulsivity and attention deficits (adgrl3.1), showing that those raised in enriched environments exhibited reduced anxiety and improved attention but continued to display impulsive behaviors.
  • These results indicate that while EE can help alleviate some symptoms associated with externalizing and internalizing disorders, impulsivity is more resistant to environmental modifications.
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Article Synopsis
  • Externalizing disorders (EDs), marked by behaviors like aggression and hyperactivity, arise from complex gene-environment interactions, but the specifics are not fully understood.
  • Research using adgrl3.1 knockout zebrafish showed that social isolation worsens anxiety, abnormal behaviors, and memory issues, particularly in genetically predisposed individuals.
  • The study highlights the importance of considering both genetic and environmental factors in diagnosing and treating EDs, emphasizing the need for more integrated approaches.
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The reproducibility crisis in bioscience, characterized by inconsistent study results, impedes our understanding of biological processes and global collaborative studies offer a unique solution. This study is the first global collaboration using the zebrafish () novel tank test, a behavioral assay for anxiety-like responses. We analyzed data from 20 laboratories worldwide, focusing on housing conditions and experimental setups.

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Article Synopsis
  • * In an experiment, male and female zebrafish from two different phenotypes were exposed to EtOH for seven days, after which their exploratory behavior was assessed using the open field test (OFT).
  • * Results revealed that zebrafish exhibited population and sex-dependent differences in sensitivity to EtOH, with leopard phenotypes showing more anxiety and short-fin females being particularly sensitive, highlighting zebrafish as useful models for studying the neurobehavioral effects of alcohol.
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Anxiety can be a protective emotion when animals face aversive conditions, but is commonly associated with various neuropsychiatric disorders when pathologically exacerbated. Drug repurposing has emerged as a valuable strategy based on utilizing the existing pharmaceuticals for new therapeutic purposes. Ketamine, traditionally used as an anesthetic, acts as a non-competitive antagonist of the glutamate N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, and shows potential anxiolytic and antidepressant effects at subanesthetic doses.

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Contextual fear conditioning is a protocol used to assess associative learning across species, including fish. Here, our goal was to expand the analysis of behavioral parameters that may reflect aversive behaviors in a contextual fear conditioning protocol using adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) and to verify how such parameters can be modulated. First, we analyzed the influence of an aversive stimulus (3 mild electric shocks for 5 s each at frequencies of 10, 100 or 1000 Hz) on fish behavior, and their ability to elicit fear responses in the absence of shock during a test session.

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Recently, social isolation measures were crucial to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the lack of social interactions affected the population mental health and may have long-term consequences on behavior and brain functions. Here, we evaluated the behavioral, physiological, and molecular effects of a social isolation (SI) in adult zebrafish, and whether the animals recover such changes after their reintroduction to the social environment.

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Article Synopsis
  • Externalizing disorders (ED) are a significant public health issue with strong genetic links, making genes like ADGRL3 important for study.
  • Research using adgrl3.1 zebrafish highlighted behavioral traits such as high impulsivity, risk-taking, and hyperactivity, which are typical of ED.
  • Atomoxetine can alleviate these behaviors, indicating a role of noradrenergic systems, while brain studies reveal new genetic pathways that may contribute to understanding and treating ED.
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Article Synopsis
  • - Social isolation negatively impacts health, leading to increased anxiety and changes in gene expression in zebrafish at different life stages after just 2 weeks of isolation.
  • - Upon reintroduction to social environments, most gene expression levels returned to normal within 24 hours, except for angptl4, which remained elevated, indicating a possible adaptive response.
  • - The study suggests that angptl4 plays a crucial role in how organisms respond to social isolation, with notable differences between young and aging zebrafish, emphasizing the significance of social interactions for mental health.
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The acquisition of executive skills such as working memory, decision-making and adaptive responding occur at different stages of central nervous system development. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are increasingly used in behavioural neuroscience for complex behavioural tasks, and there is a critical need to understand the ontogeny of their executive functions. Zebrafish across developmental stages (4, 7, 14, 30 and 90 days post fertilisation (dpf)), were assessed to track development of working memory (WM) and behavioural flexibility (BF) using the free movement pattern Y-maze (FMP Y-maze).

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Early-life adversity impacts on anxiety-related behaviors in adulthood. The effects of such adversity not only affect the animal itself, but can be passed on transgenerationally. Pervasive effects of experimentally-induced early-life stress (ELS) have been documented in adult zebrafish but it is not clear if this can be passed on via the germline.

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Background: Zebrafish are used in anxiety research as the species' naturalistic diving response to a new environment is a reliable and validated marker for anxiety-like behavior. One of the benefits of using zebrafish is the potential for high throughput drug screens in fish at the larval stage. However, at present, tests of anxiety in larvae and adults often measure different endpoints.

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Article Synopsis
  • Using different species to study complex human psychiatric conditions like ADHD can reveal important evolutionary patterns in behaviors such as movement, attention, and impulsivity.
  • This text focuses on the use of zebrafish as a model organism for studying ADHD-like behaviors and discusses the benefits and difficulties associated with this approach.
  • It provides a review of current research on ADHD in zebrafish and explores how this research could help speed up the discovery of new treatments for ADHD.
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Rationale: Triangulation of approaches (i.e., using several tests of the same construct) can be extremely useful for increasing the robustness of the findings being widely used when working with behavioral testing, especially when using rodents as a translational model.

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Aim/hypothesis: Hepatic insulin resistance (HIR) is considered to be an independent predictor of metabolic disorders and plays an important role in systemic inflammation, which contributes to abnormalities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between HIR and new markers of cardiovascular risks, including leptin/adiponectin ratio (L/A), lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)], and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), at comparable whole body insulin sensitivity in non-diabetic individuals with or without CVD and at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Methods: The HIR index, L/A, Lp(a), and TNF-α were measured in 50 participants with CVD and in 200 without CVD (1:4 ratio).

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Background: Zebrafish have been widely used to study anxiety-related phenotypes using the novel tank test (NTT). Although the NTT is well-characterized and commonly used by researchers, there is still a lack of information regarding how different experimental variables such as water quality can influence NTT performance. Zebrafish use different chemical cues and olfactory stimuli to communicate in water, so we predicted that water change frequency would affect cortisol, locomotion and anxiety-related parameters in the NTT.

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Exposure to anesthetic drugs is common in biomedical sciences being part of routine procedures in different translational species, however its impacts on memory and cognition are still debated, having different impacts depending on drug and age. The zebrafish () is a translational species widely used in behavioral neuroscience, where tricaine methanesulfonate (MS222) is the most acceptable and used drug when conducting routine procedures. Based on this, we investigated the effects of MS222 (100 mg/l) in young adults and aging zebrafish 1, 2, 3, and 7 days after exposure.

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Article Synopsis
  • Early-life stress (ELS) can lead to various long-term effects, such as heightened disease vulnerability or increased resilience in adulthood.
  • This study used zebrafish larvae exposed to chronic unpredictable early-life stress (CUELS) for 7 or 14 days to examine changes in boldness and stress reactions in a novel environment.
  • Results showed that 7 days of CUELS increased boldness but decreased anxiety-like responses without altering cortisol levels, highlighting zebrafish as a useful model for understanding ELS impacts on behavior.
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Acute stressors are recurrent in multiple species' lives and can facilitate or impair cognition. The use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a translational species to understand the mechanisms by which stress induces different behavioral phenotypes has been widely studied. Two acute stressors are recognized when using this species: (1) conspecific alarm substance (CAS); and (2) net chasing.

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Background: Zebrafish are growing in use as a model for understanding drug dependence and addiction. Sensitization paradigms have been a useful tool in identifying mechanisms involved in drug-induced behavioral and neurological changes, but in zebrafish have tended to focus on locomotor, rather than cognitive, endpoints.

Methods: Here, we used a novel method, the FMP Y-maze, which measures continuous performance through a series of repeated binary choices (L vs R), to establish a model for assessing parameters associated with psychostimulant-induced behavioral and cognitive sensitization in adult zebrafish.

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Background & Aims: Excess nutrient supply, such as high fat and high glucose intake, promotes oxidative stress and advanced glycation end products accumulation. Oxidative stress and AGE accumulation cause pathological elevation of arginase activity and pro-inflammatory signaling implicated in endothelial dysfunction. Several studies showed positive effects of l-arginine supplementation in endothelial function but little is currently known about the role of l-arginine as prevention of endothelial dysfunction caused by excessive nutrient supply (overfeeding).

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Healthy aging is associated with a decline in memory and executive function, which have both been linked with aberrant dopaminergic signaling. We examined the relationship between cognitive performance and dopamine function of young and aging zebrafish (Danio rerio). We revealed age-related decreases in working memory and cognitive flexibility in the Free-Movement Pattern (FMP) Y-maze.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Zebrafish are a promising model organism for investigating the mechanics of social interactions due to their genetic similarities to humans and ease of experimental use.
  • * Studying zebrafish can provide insights into how social interactions affect health, potentially revealing important molecular and physiological changes linked to isolation and social behavior.
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There has been rapid growth in the use of larval zebrafish as a complementary vertebrate model for drug discovery, abuse liability and pharmacological toxicology, resulting in a huge increase in zebrafish facilities worldwide. However, many research groups working with zebrafish do not typically report the pH of husbandry conditions in methodologies, nor are the pH of drug treatments reported in many research articles. This unknown factor can be a major contributor in the differential effects of drug treatments.

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Article Synopsis
  • Early-life stress in zebrafish can lead to different outcomes, such as increased risk of psychiatric disorders or resilience, depending on the duration of stress exposure.
  • A chronic unpredictable early-life stress (CUELS) protocol was applied to assess the effects of various mild stressors on zebrafish over different time periods (0, 1, 3, 7, and 14 days).
  • Zebrafish exposed to 7 days of CUELS exhibited reduced anxiety-like behavior, while those exposed to 14 days developed increased anxiety, suggesting a potential link between early stress duration and anxiety levels.
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