For this assignment I read the article “Physical exercise improves learning in zebrafish” by Ana Carolina Luchiari and Diana Marques Martins Chacon.
The main idea of this article was to see how exercise affected learning in the zebrafish. The authors related this study to humans with degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Zebrafish were chosen to be the center of this experiment, due to their strong genetics, simple neural pathways, brain structure, and their ability to preform cognitive tasks.
A series of test were done on physical activity facilitate learning process of the zebrafish such as; light, still water, currents and mazes. In one of the tests, groups of fish were put in a tank together that then had to swim against the current until exhausted. When the fish finally let the current push them back, they’d flow into a feeding area. The point of this test is to see how many times a fish will go through the routine of fighting the currents until exhausted, with a goal of just going straight to the feeding area. From these tests scientists saw that unexercised fish learned the tasks given by the 5th day of testing, where as fish submitted to physical activity learned by the 3rd day of testing. The article results that physical activity accelerates learning response in zebrafish.
When I chose this Article I didn’t know what to expect. To be honest, I had to look up what a zebrafish looked like, but I did learn a good deal from this article. I never thought that there was an “out of shape” for a fish, or a “more active” fish. I learned that zebrafish are incredibly popular in behavioral brain research. A
