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The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research

Fish are the most species rich and evolutionarily oldest vertebrate taxon. This represents opportunities for biologists who intend to employ laboratory animals in their comparative or translational research. Yet, the overwhelming majority of such studies use a single fish species, the zebrafish, a s...

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Autores principales: Tsang, Benjamin, Venditti, Veronica, Javier, Celina Micaela, Gerlai, Robert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10447575/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37612369
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40739-9
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author Tsang, Benjamin
Venditti, Veronica
Javier, Celina Micaela
Gerlai, Robert
author_facet Tsang, Benjamin
Venditti, Veronica
Javier, Celina Micaela
Gerlai, Robert
author_sort Tsang, Benjamin
collection PubMed
description Fish are the most species rich and evolutionarily oldest vertebrate taxon. This represents opportunities for biologists who intend to employ laboratory animals in their comparative or translational research. Yet, the overwhelming majority of such studies use a single fish species, the zebrafish, a suboptimal strategy from the comparative standpoint. Neuronal plasticity (learning and memory) is perhaps one of the most complex biological phenomena from a mechanistic standpoint, and thus its analysis could benefit from the use of evolutionarily ancient and simple vertebrate model organisms, i.e., fish species. However, learning & memory research with the zebrafish has been replete with problems. Here, we employ a novel fish species, the ram cichlid, we argue will be particularly appropriate for this purpose for practical as well as ethological/ecological reasons. First, we investigate whether the ram cichlid exhibits innate preference for certain colours (red, blue, yellow or green) in a four-choice task, the plus maze. Subsequently, we pair the apparently least preferred colour (green, the conditioned stimulus or CS) with food reward (the unconditioned stimulus, US) in the plus maze, a CS–US associative learning task. After eight pairing trials, we run a probe trial during which only the CS is presented. At this trial, we find significant preference to the CS, i.e., acquisition of memory of CS–US association. We argue that our proof-of-concept study demonstrating fast acquisition of CS–US association in the ram cichlid, coupled with the universal utility of some genome editing methods, will facilitate the mechanistic analysis of learning and memory.
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spelling pubmed-104475752023-08-25 The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research Tsang, Benjamin Venditti, Veronica Javier, Celina Micaela Gerlai, Robert Sci Rep Article Fish are the most species rich and evolutionarily oldest vertebrate taxon. This represents opportunities for biologists who intend to employ laboratory animals in their comparative or translational research. Yet, the overwhelming majority of such studies use a single fish species, the zebrafish, a suboptimal strategy from the comparative standpoint. Neuronal plasticity (learning and memory) is perhaps one of the most complex biological phenomena from a mechanistic standpoint, and thus its analysis could benefit from the use of evolutionarily ancient and simple vertebrate model organisms, i.e., fish species. However, learning & memory research with the zebrafish has been replete with problems. Here, we employ a novel fish species, the ram cichlid, we argue will be particularly appropriate for this purpose for practical as well as ethological/ecological reasons. First, we investigate whether the ram cichlid exhibits innate preference for certain colours (red, blue, yellow or green) in a four-choice task, the plus maze. Subsequently, we pair the apparently least preferred colour (green, the conditioned stimulus or CS) with food reward (the unconditioned stimulus, US) in the plus maze, a CS–US associative learning task. After eight pairing trials, we run a probe trial during which only the CS is presented. At this trial, we find significant preference to the CS, i.e., acquisition of memory of CS–US association. We argue that our proof-of-concept study demonstrating fast acquisition of CS–US association in the ram cichlid, coupled with the universal utility of some genome editing methods, will facilitate the mechanistic analysis of learning and memory. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC10447575/ /pubmed/37612369 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40739-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Tsang, Benjamin
Venditti, Veronica
Javier, Celina Micaela
Gerlai, Robert
The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
title The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
title_full The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
title_fullStr The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
title_full_unstemmed The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
title_short The ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
title_sort ram cichlid (mikrogeophagus ramirezi) learns an associative task: a new fish species for memory research
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10447575/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37612369
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40739-9
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