Coffee time: Low caffeine dose promotes attention and focus in zebrafish.

In this study we investigated the ability of zebrafish to discriminate visual signs and associate them with a reward in an associative-learning protocol including distractors. Moreover, we studied the effects of caffeine on animal performance in the task. After being trained to associate a specific image pattern with a reward (food) in the presence of other, distractor images, the fish were challenged to locate the exact cue associated with the reward.

Irish coffee: Effects of alcohol and caffeine on object discrimination in zebrafish.

Many studies regarding the effects of drugs investigate the acute and chronic use of alcohol, but only a few address the effects of caffeine and alcohol combined to the performance of the zebrafish in cognitive tasks. The zebrafish is an important model for studying the effects of drugs on learning, because it has large genetic similarities to humans and the non-invasive administration of the substances favors translational bias of research. In this study, we observed the effects of alcohol and caffeine on zebrafish cognition through an object discrimination test.