In addition to this idea, the researchers studied fish that were raised in isolation. These fish showed profound behavioral impairments in learning and insufficient visual processing of social stimuli, compared to their group-reared counterparts.
“In nature we see that large groups of animals can move as a coherent unit, and our laboratory is working to understand how the brains of individuals are able to pay attention to the actions of their social partners to produce behavior at the group level,” says Lovett-Barron. “In this study we found that these social abilities gradually emerge in development, as the nervous system ages.”
The glassfish, adults only 10-12 millimeters long (about the width of a pencil), has recently become a model system for biological studies. The closely related zebrafish is widely studied, but loses its small size and transparency as it ages. Glassfish, on the other hand, remain small and almost transparent their entire lives, providing new opportunities for biologists to observe the brain in action.
The paper’s coauthors are David Zada, Lisanne Schulze, Jo-Hsien Yu, Princess Tarabishi, Julia Napoli, Jimjohn Milan and Matthew Lovett-Barron.
Funding for the research was provided by: The Human Frontier Science Program Postdoctoral Fellowship (LT0002/2022L), Zuckerman STEM Program Israeli Postdoctoral Fellowship, Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022140), UC San Diego J. Yang Scholarship, Taiwanese Government Scholarship to Study Abroad Award, National Institutes of Health (NIH) (T32GM133351), Searle Scholars Award, Packard Foundation Fellowship, Pew Biomedical Scholar Award, Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in Neuroscience, Sloan Research Fellowship and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.
