School of Science Division of Life Science 28 Neural Circuits for Prey Capture in Zebrafish Supervisor: SEMMELHACK Julie / LIFS Student: CHAN Ling Fung / DSCT Course: UROP 1000, Summer The visuomotor system plays a crucial role in animal behavior, integrating visual information with motor outputs. In zebrafish larvae, the optic tectum is a key site for visuomotor decisions, but its activity may be modulated by the animal's internal state. This study aims to investigate how fear, as an internal state, can influence the zebrafish's behavioral choices in response to ambiguous visual stimuli. Using an experimental setup with head-fixed larvae, we induced a fear state through air emersion and monitored heart rate, eye, and tail kinematics. The air emersion group exhibited a significant drop in heart rate and subtle changes in behavioral responses compared to controls. However, the interpretation of these results as a fear state was limited, as other physiological processes could also contribute to the observed effects. To more conclusively establish the role of fear in modulating visuomotor behaviors, we plan to explore alternative manipulation techniques and later utilize 2-photon calcium imaging to investigate the underlying neural circuitry. Neural Circuits for Prey Capture in Zebrafish Supervisor: SEMMELHACK Julie / LIFS Student: CHEN Kang Yuen / COMP Course: UROP 1000, Summer Optogenetics technology as well as transgenic tools revolutionize the study on ethology and neuroscience. With transgenic approach like Gal4/UAS system, neural activity on subpopulation on neurons in zebrafish can be studied by optogenetics. Prey capture or hunting is an innate behavior that requires predators to execute sequence of oculomotor and locomotor action to identify, target, approach and strike preys. Optogenetics on different Gal4 lines on zebrafish reveal bout of kinematics that may comprise of huntinglike activities. In the report, optogenetics on two Gal4 lines KalTA4u508 and Lhx9 are studied based on their detected bouts.
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