Browsing by Author "Washbourne, Phil"

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    Pilot Screening to Identify Social Circuitry
    (University of Oregon, 2020) Dawson, Matthew; Dawson, Matthew; Bruckner, Joseph; Tallafuss, Alexandra; Washbourne, Phil; Washbourne, Phil
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    The Influence of Sensory Conditions on Social Behavior and Brain Activity of Zebrafish
    (University of Oregon, 2020) Fecker, Adeline; Stednitz, Sarah; Washbourne, Phil; Washbourne, Phil
    Disruption in social behavior is characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorder, a neurodevelopmental disorder that appears in early childhood. Previous experiments in zebrafish showed lesioning of the ventral forebrain reduced social engagement. Results also suggested subjects must be able to see each other to socialize (Stednitz, 2018). Subsequent experiments demonstrated that zebrafish can interact without vision, perhaps using their other senses like the water-pressure mechanosensory and olfactory systems. Our study investigates how sensory modalities contribute to social behavior. Measuring behavior in an open field allows for quantification of complex social behaviors like orienting, following, and dispersing. We manipulated sensory modalities by recording behavior in the dark and mechanosensory ablated conditions. Our results show the loss of the visual input causes a significant 43.3% reduction in orienting behaviors and a 52% reduction in following behavior. When we ablate visual input and mechanosensation, we do not observe a reduction in orienting or following behaviors. Another outstanding question is which brain regions are activated during social behavior by the contributing senses. We use whole brain immunolabeling with neuronal activity markers as an unbiased approach to identifying and quantifying active brain regions in social and alone conditions. We found the posterior pallium of the forebrain is more active in social than alone conditions. Visual ablated fish had a 44.1% decrease in total telencephalon activity compared to controls. Our study of behavior and corresponding brain activity sheds light on the importance of vision in social behavior and forebrain activity of zebrafish.