Behavioral Research Blog

A guest blog post by Elske de Haas, Ph.D. 

Fear and stress

Being fearful is a state which most humans have experienced at some point in their life. By being easily frightened and anxious, many species show to be very sensitive to stress. Many studies have shown that anxiety can be influenced by the neurophysiological characteristics of an individual. It appears that heightened levels of corticosterone as well as low levels of serotonin constitute to many neuro-pathological disorders, such as depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Guest post by Jan-Willem Potters

Successful locomotion and the maintenance of balance is the result of an intricate collaboration of the sensory system, sensorimotor integration and the motor system. Needless to say, there are many parts of the brain that work together to carry out this type of behavior. Locomotion is affected in many different neurological diseases, and is an interesting candidate to study symptoms in detail and the effect of possible therapies of these diseases.

By Remy Manuel, Marnix Gorissen and Ruud van den Bos
(email: r.manuel@science.ru.nl, m.gorissen@science.ru.nl & r.vandenbos@science.ru.nl)

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is increasingly being used as model in behavioural, neurobiological and genetic research. Underlying reasons are high genetic homology to humans and the many advantages over the use of rodents, such as low cost, easy handling, short reproduction cycle and high fecundity. Furthermore, its genome, transcriptome and proteome are well described, making the species a model of choice for behavioural research linked to genetics.

An emerging field addresses learning and memory related to anxiety and fear behaviour, which has been studied through inhibitory avoidance paradigms [1,2]. Assessment of inhibitory avoidance learning in zebrafish is based on the conflict between entering a dark area to avoid a brightly lit area (innate response; innate anxiety) and avoiding this dark area, as it has been associated with an electric shock as negative stimulus (conditioned fear avoidance). Higher latencies of entering the dark area following training are indicative of increased inhibitory avoidance learning.