PUBLICATION
Embryonic Alcohol Exposure Leading to Social Avoidance and Altered Anxiety Responses in Adult Zebrafish
- Authors
- Baggio, S., Mussulini, B.H., de Oliveira, D.L., Gerlai, R., Rico, E.P.
- ID
- ZDB-PUB-170909-9
- Date
- 2017
- Source
- Behavioural brain research 352: 62-69 (Journal)
- Registered Authors
- Gerlai, Robert T.
- Keywords
- Alcohol, anxiety, social preference, zebrafish
- MeSH Terms
-
- Animals
- Anti-Anxiety Agents/pharmacology
- Anxiety/drug therapy
- Anxiety/etiology*
- Avoidance Learning/drug effects
- Behavior, Animal/drug effects
- Buspirone/pharmacology
- Disease Models, Animal
- Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
- Embryo, Nonmammalian/drug effects
- Ethanol/toxicity
- Female
- Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders/psychology*
- Male
- Random Allocation
- Social Behavior*
- Zebrafish
- PubMed
- 28882694 Full text @ Behav. Brain Res.
Citation
Baggio, S., Mussulini, B.H., de Oliveira, D.L., Gerlai, R., Rico, E.P. (2017) Embryonic Alcohol Exposure Leading to Social Avoidance and Altered Anxiety Responses in Adult Zebrafish. Behavioural brain research. 352:62-69.
Abstract
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) is a syndrome characterized by neurological and behavioral impairments. A recently discovered hallmark of FASD is impaired social behavior. Avoidance of social interaction typical of FASD may be the result of increased anxiety. Previously, the zebrafish was successfully used to model embryonic alcohol induced social abnormalities. Here, we analyzed both anxiety and social responses using a zebrafish FASD model, in adult fish. We exposed zebrafish embryos to low concentrations of ethanol (0.1%; 0.25%; 0.5% and 1% v/v) for 2h at, 24hours post-fertilization, to mimic the most prevalent milder FASD cases, and investigated the ensuing alterations in adult, 4-month-old, zebrafish. We studied social interaction in the social preference task and anxiety in the novel tank task. We observed an ethanol dose dependent reduction of time spend in the conspecific zone compared to control, corroborating prior findings. We also found significant changes in the novel tank (e.g. increased bottom dwell time, increased distance to top) suggesting elevated anxiety to control, but we also found, using an anxiolytic drug buspirone, that reduction of anxiety is associated with reduced shoaling. Our results confirm that embryonic alcohol exposure disrupts social behavior, and also show that its effects on anxiety related phenotypes may be genotype, alcohol administration method, experimental procedure and test-context dependent.
Genes / Markers
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping