Anxiolytic-like Effect of Chrysin on Female Zebrafish is Likely Mediated by α5 subunits of GABAA Receptors.

Chrysin (5,7-dihydroxyflavone) is a natural flavonoid with potential anxiolytic-like effects in preclinical models. Acute treatment with this molecule (0 - 10 mg/kg) produced a biphasic dose-response in the zebrafish light/dark test (LDT), with anxiolytic-like effect at low doses and anxiogenic-like effects at high doses. Chrysin (1 mg/kg) decreased anxiety-like behavior in the zebrafish novel tank test (NTT), but did not prevent the anxiogenic effects of acute stress.

Biocultural Aspects of Mental Distress: Expanding the Biomedical Model Towards an Integrative Biopsychosocial Understanding of Disorder.

To produce a theoretical approach about the relations between neuroscience and psychopathology that expands beyond the biomedical model to include a non-reductionist, enactive, and biocultural perspective. An integrative review, drawing from the biocultural approach from Anthropology, is used to produce examples from epigenetics, neuroplasticity, and functional neuroanatomy. A biocultural approach points to a brain that is highly plastic, reinforcing a much more complex model in which biological vulnerabilities and the historical-cultural environment co-construct each other.

Repeated exposure to ethanol alters memory acquisition and neurotransmission parameters in zebrafish brain.

Alcohol is widely consumed worldwide and its abuse can cause cognitive dysfunction, affecting memory and learning due to several neurophysiological changes. An imbalance in several neurotransmitters, including the cholinergic and glutamatergic systems, have been implicated in these effects. Zebrafish are sensitive to alcohol, respond to reward stimuli, and tolerate and exhibit withdrawal behaviors.

Activation of NOS-cGMP pathways promotes stress-induced sensitization of behavioral responses in zebrafish.

Nitric oxide (NO) is a molecule involved in plasticity across levels and systems. The role of NOergic pathways in stress-induced sensitization (SIS) of behavioral responses, in which a particular stressor triggers a state of hyper-responsiveness to other stressors after an incubation period, was assessed in adult zebrafish. In this model, adult zebrafish acutely exposed to a fear-inducing conspecific alarm substance (CAS) and left undisturbed for an incubation period show increased anxiety-like behavior 24 h after exposure.