The Development and Use of a Color Discrimination T-Maze Learning Task in the Zebrafish (<i>Danio rerio</i>)

<p>Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are becoming increasingly utilized in behavioral studies as a model of human learning and memory. The results of a previous study by Colwill, Raymond, Ferreira, and Escudero (2005) indicated that this species is capable of discriminating between colors and learning to respond to an assigned hue at either arm of a T-maze, indicating a learned association between the neutral stimulus and reward. While this original study showed that this task was appropriate for use in this species, we proposed that it had the potential to provide more data on specifics of the learning process with amended methods. We developed and tested such a task, including a component to determine the influence of pharmacological agents on zebrafish performance in the task by examining the behavioral effects of three alcohol doses (0.0625, 0.75, and 1.5% EtOH). No significant results were found at the group level and we observed a high degree of variability among individuals. We concluded that a number of extraneous factors likely contributed to the overall poor performance of the fish, including net handling stress and innate color and side biases. Discussion includes the role of these factors, the importance of investigating individual differences in zebrafish, and suggested future directions for this field of research.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2013

Author dc:creator

• Lamb, Elizabeth Ann

Contributors dc:contributor

• David Echevarria
• Stan Kuczaj
• Richard Mohn

• Psychology
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/385

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1455