Behavioral effects of visual stimuli in adult zebrafish using a novel eight-tank imaging system.

Abstract

Animals respond to various environmental cues. Animal behavior is complex, and behavior analysis can greatly help to understand brain function. Most of the available behavioral imaging setups are expensive, provide limited options for customization, and allow for behavioral imaging of one animal at a time. The current study takes advantage of adult zebrafish as a model organism to study behavior in a novel behavioral setup allowing one to concurrently image 8 adult zebrafish. Our results indicate that adult zebrafish show a unique behavioral profile in response to visual stimuli such as moving lines. In the presence of moving lines, the fish spent more time exploring the tank and spent more time toward the edges of the tanks. In addition, the fish moved and oriented themselves against the direction of the moving lines, indicating a negative optomotor response (OMR). With repeated exposure to moving lines, we observed a reduced optomotor response in adult zebrafish. Our behavioral setup is relatively inexpensive, provides flexibility in the presentation of various animated visual stimuli, and offers improved throughput for analyzing behavior in adult zebrafish. This behavioral setup shows promising potential to quantify various behavioral measures and opens new avenues to understand complex behaviors.