Learning and memory

Many of the paradigms used to study learning and memory in rodents have been successfully translated to fish studies. One of the challenges in these studies though, is keeping track of these fast and sometimes erratically moving animals. EthoVision® XT is able to accurately detect and track any fish species and provides you with the dependent variables you need for your research, such as distance moved, velocity, and time spend in the different parts of the maze. Combined with the Multiple Arenas Module, you can track fish in multiple set-ups simultaneously, saving time and effort.

Examples of research

Examples of these paradigms are T-mazes and 2- or 3-chambered set-ups including light/dark boxes. Some common studies include spatial and non-spatial (visual, such as color) discriminative learning and aversive or appetitive conditioning.

Examples of dependent variables:

• Number of correct choices (entries in correct arm or chamber)
• Amount of time spent in each zone
• Total distance travelled in each zone
• Mean velocity
• Percentage of time spent immobile

A few  publications that may interest you:

• Champagne, D.L.; Hoefnagels, C.C.M.; de Kloet, R.E.; Richardson, M.K. (2010). Translating rodent behavioral repertoire to zebrafish (Danio rerio): Relevance for stress research. Behavioural Brain Research, 214, 332-342.
• Levin, E.D. (2011). Zebrafish assessment of cognitive improvement and anxiolysis: filling the gap between in vitro and rodent models for drug development. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 22(1), 75-84.
• Levin, E.D.; Cerutti, D.T. (2009). Behavioral Neuroscience of Zebrafish. Chapter 15 from Methods of Behavior Analysis in Neuroscience, second edition. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press.

Natural preferences and discriminative learning
In all set-ups, the location of the fish within the tank or maze is important. With EthoVision XT you can easily define different zones such as the arms of the T-maze, the different chambers, or simply quadrants of a tank. Behaviors of interest are automatically recorded - you can determine how much time the fish spends in the “correct” zone, or how much distance was covered in the different compartments. Natural preferences and learned behaviors are automatically recorded by EthoVision XT.

Example: In positive reinforcement non-spatial discriminative learning, EthoVision XT will help you answer “Is the fish able to learn that the colored arm always contains a food reward?” by providing dependent variables such as the time the animal required to reach the goal arm and the time spent in the arm that contains the reward compared to the time spent in the arm that does not contain the reward.

Start your trial automatically

You can set the conditions for EthoVision XT to automatically start and stop tracking, even when you are monitoring multiple set-ups simultaneously.

Example: When using a T-maze set-up, EthoVision XT can automatically start tracking as soon as the fish leaves the start box, and stop as soon as it has been in the goal zone for a predetermined amount of time.

Data that makes sense
EthoVision XT measures a wide range of parameters related to swimming behavior, including swimming speed, distance swam, and percentage of time spent moving. In addition, a variety of parameters related to turning behavior can be measured. Mean turn angle indicates the change in direction and angular velocity measures the speed of direction changing. Both parameters can be used to analyze explorative behavior.

Compare manual observations
EthoVision XT has a built-in Manual Event Recorder. This equips you with an easy-to-use tool to score behaviors in addition to automatically recorded tracking data, or to validate and fine-tune automatically scored behaviors such as freezing or zigzagging. All your results are visualized and analyzed synchronously.