Comparative social cognition: zebrafish as a neurobehavioural model

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Mind the fish: zebrafish as a model in cognitive social neuroscience

Publication . Oliveira, Rui F.

Understanding how the brain implements social behavior on one hand, and how social processes feedback on the brain to promote fine-tuning of behavioral output according to changes in the social environment is a major challenge in contemporary neuroscience. A critical step to take this challenge successfully is finding the appropriate level of analysis when relating social to biological phenomena. Given the enormous complexity of both the neural networks of the brain and social systems, the use of a cognitive level of analysis (in an information processing perspective) is proposed here as an explanatory interface between brain and behavior. A conceptual framework for a cognitive approach to comparative social neuroscience is proposed, consisting of the following steps to be taken across different species with varying social systems: (1) identification of the functional building blocks of social skills; (2) identification of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the previously identified social skills; and (3) mapping these information processing mechanisms onto the brain. Teleost fish are presented here as a group of choice to develop this approach, given the diversity of social systems present in closely related species that allows for planned phylogenetic comparisons, and the availability of neurogenetic tools that allows the visualization and manipulation of selected neural circuits in model species such as the zebrafish. Finally, the state-of-the art of zebrafish social cognition and of the tools available to map social cognitive abilities to neural circuits in zebrafish are reviewed.

2013-08-08Journal article

Open access

Social dominance modulates eavesdropping in zebrafish

Publication . Abril-de-Abreu, Rodrigo; Cruz, Ana S.; Oliveira, Rui F.

Group living animals may eavesdrop on signalling interactions between conspecifics and integrate it with their own past social experience in order to optimize the use of relevant information from others. However, little is known about this interplay between public (eavesdropped) and private social information. To investigate it, we first manipulated the dominance status of bystander zebrafish. Next, we either allowed or prevented bystanders from observing a fight. Finally, we assessed their behaviour towards the winners and losers of the interaction, using a custom-made video-tracking system and directional analysis. We found that only dominant bystanders who had seen the fight revealed a significant increase in directional focus (a measure of attention) towards the losers of the fights. Furthermore, our results indicate that information about the fighters' acquired status was collected from the signalling interaction itself and not from post-interaction status cues, which implies the existence of individual recognition in zebrafish. Thus, we show for the first time that zebrafish, a highly social model organism, eavesdrop on conspecific agonistic interactions and that this process is modulated by the eavesdroppers' dominance status. We suggest that this type of integration of public and private information may be ubiquitous in social learning processes.

2015-08-26Journal article

Open access

Social Eavesdropping in Zebrafish: Tuning of Attention to Social Interactions

Publication . Abril-de-Abreu, Rodrigo; Cruz, José; Oliveira, Rui F.

Group living animals may eavesdrop on signalling interactions between conspecifics in order to collect adaptively relevant information obtained from others, without incurring in the costs of first-hand information acquisition. This ability (aka social eavesdropping) is expected to impact Darwinian fitness, and hence predicts the evolution of cognitive processes that enable social animals to use public information available in the environment. These adaptive specializations in cognition may have evolved both at the level of learning and memory mechanisms, and at the level of input mechanisms, such as attention, which select the information that is available for learning. Here we used zebrafish to test if attention in a social species is tuned to the exchange of information between conspecifics. Our results show that zebrafish are more attentive towards interacting (i.e. fighting) than towards non-interacting pairs of conspecifics, with the exposure to fighting not increasing activity or stress levels. Moreover, using video playbacks to manipulate form features of the fighting fish, we show that during the assessment phase of the fight, bystanders' attention is more driven by form features of the interacting opponents; whereas during the post-resolution phase, it is driven by biological movement features of the dominant fish chasing the subordinate fish.

2015-08-05Journal article

Open access