Скачать или смотреть Larval zebrafish swim behavior in a closed and open loop

In 2019, Janelia researchers uncovered the critical role of glial cells called radial astrocytes in controlling an important “giving up” behavior in zebrafish. They found astrocytes act as a counter, telling a fish to stop swimming when it isn’t getting anywhere – a behavior crucial for survival. But scientists didn’t know how the astrocytes communicated with neurons to control this action.

Researchers from Janelia and Harvard have now deciphered this conversation, revealing how astrocytes trigger a biochemical circuit that regulates neuronal activity and causes the fish to stop swimming.

To study this behavior, the researchers manipulated the efficacy of the fish's swims by cycling between two conditions: closed loop and open loop. During closed loop, the fish's swim attempts resulted in backward drift of the visual stimuli, signaling successful forward swimming. During open loop, swim attempts resulted in no change to the visual stimulus and were thus futile.

Credit: Chen et al.