Zebrafish Behavior
Much of neurobiology attempts to understand how behaviors are produced by the nervous system. Our focus is on movements produced by zebrafish. The larval fish are very FAST. They escape in response to a touch in a less than 1/10 of a second, as shown in the slow motion movie on the left, taken with a high speed camera at 1,000 frames a second.
This speed is important to the fish, as is clear in the ability of the fish to escape from the very fast attack of a dragonfly on the right.
We study how these remarkable movements are accomplished by circuits in the brain and spinal cord. The transparency of the fish allows us to kill individual neurons in the intact animal with a laser beam. We can then examine the movements of the animal by high speed video to determine how particular nerve cells contribute to a behavior. This is difficult or impossible in most vertebrates.
We also study fish with mutations in genes that affect their ability to move. Zebrafish and humans share many features in the control of their movements. Genes that disrupt movements in zebrafish are also mutated in human diseases of movement. Thus, studying zebrafish allows us to learn about humans and human disorders.