Sadia Naim’s research while affiliated with University of Toronto and other places

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Publications (1)


Fig. 1 Automated home tank and experimental protocol. A The automated home tank consisted of a standard 40-l glass aquarium (50.5 cm x 30.5 cm x 25.5 cm). Two columns were added at the back corner of each tank using white PVC following the indicated dimension. A microcontroller was placed in a box at the back of the tank which controlled the RGB LED as well as the home-made feeder (which consisted of a rotating servomotor. A filtration system was placed on the back of the tanks to maintain optimal water quality during testing. B Two conditionings were used in this device. Fish were first habituated to the setup in groups of 5 for 6 days. Then, fish were transferred individually into one setup (five in parallel) and allowed to habituate for 24 h. Regardless of the protocol (simple or discrimination), fish
Fig 3 Discrimination conditioning. A Time (in seconds, median and quartiles) spent by fish from paired group (n = 18) in the CS+ (grey) and CS-(white) columns during the 45 s preceding the food reward release during the first conditioning trial of each conditioning day. B Time (in seconds, median and quartiles) spent by fish from paired group (n = 18) in the CS+ (grey) and CS-(white) columns during the 60 s of the first memory test. C Time (in seconds, median and quartiles) spent by fish from paired group (n = 18, grey) in the CS+ (grey) and CS-(white) columns during the 60 s of the second memory test. D Time (in seconds, median and quartiles) spent by fish from unpaired group (n = 18) in the CS1 (green) and CS2 (red) columns
A simple semi-automated home-tank method and procedure to explore classical associative learning in adult zebrafish
  • Article
  • Full-text available

February 2023

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238 Reads

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5 Citations

Behavior Research Methods

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Sadia Naim

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The zebrafish is a laboratory species that gained increasing popularity the last decade in a variety of subfields of biology, including toxicology, ecology, medicine, and the neurosciences. An important phenotype often measured in these fields is behaviour. Consequently, numerous new behavioural apparati and paradigms have been developed for the zebrafish, including methods for the analysis of learning and memory in adult zebrafish. Perhaps the biggest obstacle in these methods is that zebrafish is particularly sensitive to human handling. To overcome this confound, automated learning paradigms have been developed with varying success. In this manuscript, we present a semi-automated home tank-based learning/memory test paradigm utilizing visual cues, and show that it is capable of quantifying classical associative learning performance in zebrafish. We demonstrate that in this task, zebrafish successfully acquire the association between coloured-light and food reward. The hardware and software components of the task are easy and cheap to obtain and simple to assemble and set up. The procedures of the paradigm allow the test fish to remain completely undisturbed by the experimenter for several days in their home (test) tank, eliminating human handling or human interference induced stress. We demonstrate that the development of cheap and simple automated home-tank-based learning paradigms for the zebrafish is feasible. We argue that such tasks will allow us to better characterize numerous cognitive and mnemonic features of the zebrafish, including elemental as well as configural learning and memory, which will, in turn, also enhance our ability to study neurobiological mechanisms underlying learning and memory using this model organism.

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Citations (1)


... Studying cognitive functions and learning in animals can be timeconsuming and labor-intensive. Automation may be advantageous in such studies as it can shorten the time needed for training and data acquisition (Buatois et al., 2024). In addition, automation can reduce unintended cueing by the experimenter. ...

Reference:

A framework for a low‐cost system of automated gate control in assays of spatial cognition in fishes
A simple semi-automated home-tank method and procedure to explore classical associative learning in adult zebrafish

Behavior Research Methods