Training in a cue-guided maze increases adult neurogenesis in specific pallial circuits of zebrafish

MAZZITELLI-FUENTES, LAURA; LUCAS A MONGIAT

Congreso; XXXV Annual Meeting of the Argentinian Society for Neuroscience Research; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

The teleost brain is under continuous remodeling of its neuronal circuits by adult neurogenesis.Neuronal progenitors proliferate and differentiate into adult-born neurons. During maturation,neurons that don’t integrate synaptically are subjected to cell death programs. Thus, network activity is critical to promote synaptogenesis and survival of maturing neurons. We aimed to study if training in a cognitive task promotes adult neurogenesis in the zebrafish pallium. We trained zebrafish in a diamond-shape maze to achieve a relational association of internal cues. After 5 days of training, fish achieve ~80% of correct choices, and we observe an increase in cell proliferation, specifically in the caudal region of the dorsolateral pallium (cDl) and in the rostral dorsomedial pallium (rDm). Furthermore, we studied if learning-related neuronal activity modifies the survival of new neurons. We labeled a cohort of proliferating progenitors and trained fish in two different temporal windows: 0-14 dpi and 12-30 dpi. We found that training increases the number of new-born neurons in rDm and cDl from 0-14 dpi, but only rDm neurons are upregulated when training from 12-30 dpi. We conclude that adult zebrafish succeed to learn a relational task, this cognitive activity promotes neuronal progenitor proliferation and adult neurogenesis in specific regions of the pallial network at different time slots. This is the first report relating adult neurogenesis to a cognitive process in fish.