Due to the recognition of fishes as sentient beings, the zebrafish (Danio rerio) has become an emergent animal model system to investigate the biological processes of nocifensive responses. Here, we aimed to characterize the zebrafish social behavior in a nociception-based context. For this purpose, using a three-dimensional analysis of heterogeneous shoals, we investigated the main behavioral responses in two 6-min trials: before (baseline) and after a single intraperitoneal (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComp Biochem Physiol C Toxicol Pharmacol
September 2021
The zebrafish (Danio rerio) has been considered a suitable model organism to assess the evolutionarily conserved bases of behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to stress. Depending on the nature of the stressor, prolonged stress may elicit habituation or evoke long-term changes in the central nervous systems (CNS) often associated with various neuropsychiatric disorders. Conspecific alarm substance (CAS) and net chasing (NC) constitute chemical and physical stressors, respectively, which cause aversive behaviors and physiological changes in fishes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability of the nervous system to detect a wide range of noxious stimuli is crucial to avoid life-threatening injury and to trigger protective behavioral and physiological responses. Pain represents a complex phenomenon, including nociception associated with cognitive and emotional processing. Animal experimental models have been developed to understand the mechanisms involved in pain response, as well as to discover novel pharmacological and non-pharmacological anti-pain therapies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStress is the body's reaction to any change that requires adaptive responses. In various organisms, stress is a seizure-related comorbidity. Despite the exposure to stressors eliciting aversive behaviors in zebrafish, there are no data showing whether stress potentiates epileptic seizures in this species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProg Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
August 2020
Social behaviors are key components that play adaptive roles in various species, including humans. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a social species and the shoaling behavior can be pharmacologically manipulated either by anxiogenic or anxiolytic substances, providing translatable data in neuropsychiatric research. Here, we aimed to characterize the shoaling behavior in zebrafish under different pharmacological manipulations in a three-dimensional (3D) perspective using the spatial coordinates of the fish positions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAversive conditions elicit anxiety responses that prepare the organism to an eventual threat. Nonetheless, prolonged anxiety is a pathological condition associated with various neuropsychiatric disorders. Here, we evaluated whether the conspecific alarm substance (CAS), a chemical cue that elicits aversion, influences anxiety-like behaviors and modulates brain oxidative stress-related parameters in wild-type (WT) and leopard (leo) zebrafish following a repeated exposure protocol.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPain, a severely debilitating symptom of many human disorders, is a growing, unmet biomedical problem. Although the use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) to investigate both behavioral and physiological nociception-related responses is expanding rapidly, the characterization of behavioral phenotypes that reflect injury location is limited, making the results of such studies difficult to interpret. Here, we characterize putative nociception-related behavioral phenotypes in adult zebrafish following an intraperitoneal (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCaffeine is a substance present in several foods and drinks of common western diet. Although high caffeine concentrations induce anxiogenic properties in various species, the influence of the different baselines of anxiety levels on caffeine-mediated responses is poorly understood. The short-fin wild-type (WT) and leopard (leo) zebrafish populations present significant behavioral differences, in which leo shows exacerbated anxiety-like responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPharmacol Biochem Behav
February 2016
Alcohol is a potent agent for eliciting aggression in vertebrates. Taurine (TAU) is an amino sulfonic acid with pleiotropic actions on brain function. It is one of the most abundant molecules present in energy drinks frequently used as mixers for alcoholic beverages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study investigated whether the antioxidant activity of p,p'-methoxyl-diphenyl diselenide [(MeOPhSe)(2)] is involved in its protective effect against cognitive impairment induced by streptozotocin (STZ) in a model of sporadic dementia of Alzheimer's type (SDAT). Swiss mice were treated with STZ or vehicle [2 µl of 2·5 mg ml(-1) solution; intracerebroventricularly (i.c.
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