Whole-brain mapping of socially isolated zebrafish reveals that lonely fish are not loners

Abstract

The zebrafish was used to assess the impact of social isolation on behaviour and brain function. As in humans and other social species, early social deprivation reduced social preference in juvenile zebrafish. Whole-brain functional maps of anti-social isolated (lonely) fish were distinct from anti-social (loner) fish found in the normal population. These isolation-induced activity changes revealed profound disruption of neural activity in brain areas linked to social behaviour, social cue processing, and anxiety/stress. Several of the affected regions are modulated by serotonin, and we found that social preference in isolated fish could be rescued by acutely reducing serotonin levels.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Hande Tunbak

    The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3180-1401
  2. Mireya Cristina Vazquez-Prada

    The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Thomas Michael Ryan

    The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Adam Raymond Kampff

    Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Elena Dreosti

    Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    e.dreosti@ucl.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-6738-7057

Funding

Wellcome (202465/Z/16/Z.)

  • Elena Dreosti

Gatsby Charitable Foundation (090843/F/09/Z)

  • Adam Raymond Kampff

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All experiments were performed according to protocols approved by local ethical committee (AWERB Bloomsbury Campus UCL) and the UK Home Office. PAE2ECA7E

Copyright

© 2020, Tunbak et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 7,130
    views
  • 858
    downloads
  • 61
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Hande Tunbak
  2. Mireya Cristina Vazquez-Prada
  3. Thomas Michael Ryan
  4. Adam Raymond Kampff
  5. Elena Dreosti
(2020)
Whole-brain mapping of socially isolated zebrafish reveals that lonely fish are not loners
eLife 9:e55863.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.55863

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.55863

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Jessica Royer, Valeria Kebets ... Boris C Bernhardt
    Research Article Updated

    Complex structural and functional changes occurring in typical and atypical development necessitate multidimensional approaches to better understand the risk of developing psychopathology. Here, we simultaneously examined structural and functional brain network patterns in relation to dimensions of psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) dataset. Several components were identified, recapitulating the psychopathology hierarchy, with the general psychopathology (p) factor explaining most covariance with multimodal imaging features, while the internalizing, externalizing, and neurodevelopmental dimensions were each associated with distinct morphological and functional connectivity signatures. Connectivity signatures associated with the p factor and neurodevelopmental dimensions followed the sensory-to-transmodal axis of cortical organization, which is related to the emergence of complex cognition and risk for psychopathology. Results were consistent in two separate data subsamples and robust to variations in analytical parameters. Although model parameters yielded statistically significant brain–behavior associations in unseen data, generalizability of the model was rather limited for all three latent components (r change from within- to out-of-sample statistics: LC1within = 0.36, LC1out = 0.03; LC2within = 0.34, LC2out = 0.05; LC3within = 0.35, LC3out = 0.07). Our findings help in better understanding biological mechanisms underpinning dimensions of psychopathology, and could provide brain-based vulnerability markers.

    1. Neuroscience
    Hans C Leier, Alexander J Foden ... Heather T Broihier
    Research Article

    Sensory experience during developmental critical periods has lifelong consequences for circuit function and behavior, but the molecular and cellular mechanisms through which experience causes these changes are not well understood. The Drosophila antennal lobe houses synapses between olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) and downstream projection neurons (PNs) in stereotyped glomeruli. Many glomeruli exhibit structural plasticity in response to early-life odor exposure, indicating a general sensitivity of the fly olfactory circuitry to early sensory experience. We recently found that glia shape antennal lobe development in young adults, leading us to ask if glia also drive experience-dependent plasticity during this period. Here, we define a critical period for structural and functional plasticity of OSN-PN synapses in the ethyl butyrate (EB)-sensitive glomerulus VM7. EB exposure for the first 2 days post-eclosion drives large-scale reductions in glomerular volume, presynapse number, and post- synaptic activity. Crucially, pruning during the critical period has long-term consequences for circuit function since both OSN-PN synapse number and spontaneous activity of PNs remain persistently decreased following early-life odor exposure. The highly conserved engulfment receptor Draper is required for this critical period plasticity as ensheathing glia upregulate Draper, invade the VM7 glomerulus, and phagocytose OSN presynaptic terminals in response to critical-period EB exposure. Loss of Draper fully suppresses the morphological and physiological consequences of critical period odor exposure, arguing that phagocytic glia engulf intact synaptic terminals. These data demonstrate experience-dependent pruning of synapses and argue that Drosophila olfactory circuitry is a powerful model for defining the function of glia in critical period plasticity.