Whole-brain mapping of socially isolated zebrafish reveals that lonely fish are not loners

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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.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.

Article and author information

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Hande Tunbak

The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3180-1401
Mireya Cristina Vazquez-Prada

The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Thomas Michael Ryan

The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Adam Raymond Kampff

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Elena Dreosti

Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom

For correspondence
e.dreosti@ucl.ac.uk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6738-7057

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

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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.