Publications
This is a list of recent publications from the lab.
A full list of publications can be found on Google Scholar.
2024
Ever wonder if you can predict how someone responds to a psychiatric drug based on their personality? Our data suggests you can! In this study, we found that serotonergic function correlates with boldness in female fish, and that bold and shy female fish respond in opposite directions to a commonly prescribed antidepressant (escitalopram, trade name: Lexapro).
Here we find that only a modest difference in age (6 months vs 12 months) results in changes in how far fish swim and what parts of a novel tank they explore. Interestingly, the effects on what parts of a tank a fish will explore depend on the strain of the fish whereas overall swimming decreases irrespective of strain. This suggests that some aspects of aging are influenced by genetics more than others.
2023
We describe the development of a new and improved way of administering drugs to adult zebrafish. Other methods are invasive, stressful, and/or imprecise. Our new feed-based method requires minimal manipulation of the animals and is individually tailored based on weight. These improvements are important for increasing both animal welfare and experimental reliability. Oh yea, and the fish really like it!
2022
In this paper, we found that traditional descriptions of exploratory behavior (bold versus shy) do not fully capture individual differences in the behavior of adult zebrafish. Instead, we find that behavior falls into four categories: bold, shy, active explorers and wall-huggers.
2021
This paper describes our adult zebrafish brain atlas (AZBA: azba.wayne.edu). This tool opens up new avenues in the use of adult zebrafish to understand vertebrate neuroanatomy.
2020
Kenney, JW. "Associative and non-associative learning in adult zebrafish." Behavioral and Neural Genetics of Zebrafish. Academic Press, 2020. 187-204. (pdf)
An overview of different methods and approaches to studying learning and memory in adult zebrafish. Includes data on the increasing popularity of zebrafish as an animal model for studying learning and memory.