Whole-brain mapping of socially isolated zebrafish reveals that lonely fish are not loners
Abstract
The zebrafish was used to assess the impact of social isolation on behaviour and brain function. As in humans and other social species, early social deprivation reduced social preference in juvenile zebrafish. Whole-brain functional maps of anti-social isolated (lonely) fish were distinct from anti-social (loner) fish found in the normal population. These isolation-induced activity changes revealed profound disruption of neural activity in brain areas linked to social behaviour, social cue processing, and anxiety/stress. Several of the affected regions are modulated by serotonin, and we found that social preference in isolated fish could be rescued by acutely reducing serotonin levels.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Wellcome (202465/Z/16/Z.)
- Elena Dreosti
Gatsby Charitable Foundation (090843/F/09/Z)
- Adam Raymond Kampff
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed according to protocols approved by local ethical committee (AWERB Bloomsbury Campus UCL) and the UK Home Office. PAE2ECA7E
Reviewing Editor
- Peggy Mason, University of Chicago, United States
Publication history
- Received: February 10, 2020
- Accepted: April 23, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: May 5, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: June 9, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Tunbak et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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