Protein synthesis-dependent associative long-term memory in larval zebrafish.
The larval zebrafish is a model organism to study the neural circuitry underlying behavior. There exist, however, few examples of robust long-term memory. Here we describe a simple, unrestrained associative place-conditioning paradigm. We show that visual access to a group of conspecifics has rewarding properties for 6- to 8-day-old larval zebrafish. We use this social reward as an unconditioned stimulus and pair it with a distinct visual environment. After training, larvae exhibited spatial preference for the location previously paired with the social reward for up to 36 h, indicating that zebrafish larvae can exhibit long-term associative memory. Furthermore, incubation with a protein synthesis inhibitor or an NMDAR-antagonist impaired memory. In future experiments, this learning paradigm could be used to study the social interactions of larval zebrafish or paired with cell-specific metabolic labeling to visualize circuits underlying memory formation.
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, and Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, D-60528, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Flora I
FI
Hinz
Mark
M
Aizenberg
Georgi
G
Tushev
Erin M
EM
Schuman
D000818:Animals; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000187:drug effects; D018691:Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists / Q000494:pharmacology*; D007814:Larva; D057567:Memory, Long-Term / Q000187:drug effects*; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis; D011500:Protein Synthesis Inhibitors / Q000494:pharmacology*; D016194:Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors; D012201:Reward; D015027:Zebrafish
D018691:Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists; D011500:Protein Synthesis Inhibitors; D016194:Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate