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futurity_sci_tech 00990.txt

#Robots show how alcohol calms fear in fish New york University rightoriginal Studyposted by James Devitt-NYU on July 31 2013nyu (US)# Bio-inspired robots that look like predators can scare fish but a high dose of ethanol can blunt their fear according to new research. These findings may pave the way for new methodologies for understanding anxiety and other emotions as well as substances that alter them. Maurizio Porfiri associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic institute of New york University (NYU-Poly) and Simone Macr##a collaborator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanit##in Rome Italy published their findings in PLOS ONE. Porfiri and his colleagues believe zebrafish may be a suitable replacement for higher-order animals in tests to evaluate emotional responses. This novel robotic approach would also reduce the number of live test subjects needed for experiments and may inform other areas of inquiry from collective behavior to animal protection. This latest study expands Porfiri and Macr##s efforts to determine how bio-inspired robots can be employed as reliable stimuli to elicit reactions from live zebrafish. Previous studies have established that zebrafish show a strong affinity for robotic members designed to swim and appear as one of their own and that this preference can be abolished by exposing the fish to ethanol. Scary robotporfiri and Macri along with students Valentina Cianca and Tiziana Bartolini hypothesized that robots could be used to induce fear as well as affinity and designed a robot mimicking the morphology and locomotion pattern of the Indian leaf fish a natural predator of the zebrafish. In the lab they simulated a harmless predatory scenario placing the zebrafish and the robotic Indian leaf fish in separate compartments of a three-section tank. The other compartment was left empty. The control group uniformly avoided the robotic predator showing a preference for the empty section. To determine whether alcohol would affect fear responses the researchers exposed separate groups of fish to different doses of ethanol in water. Ethanol has been shown to influence anxiety-related responses in humans rodents and some species of fish. The zebrafish exposed to the highest concentrations of ethanol showed remarkable changes in behavior failing to avoid the predatory robot. Acute administration of ethanol causes no harm and has no lasting effect on zebrafish.##These results are further evidence that robots may represent an exciting new approach in evaluating and understanding emotional responses and behavior#says Porfiri.##Robots are ideal replacements as independent variables in tests involving social stimuli#they are fully controllable stimuli can be reproduced precisely each time and robots can never be influenced by the behavior of the test subjects.##Seek shelterto validate their findings and ensure that the zebrafish behavior being modulated was in fact a fear-based response Porfiri and his collaborators conducted two traditional anxiety tests and evaluated whether the results obtained therein were sensitive to ethanol administration. They placed test subjects in a two-chamber tank with one well-lit side and one darkened side to establish which conditions were preferable. In a separate tank they simulated a heron attack from the water s surface#herons also prey on zebrafish #and measured how quickly and how many fish took shelter from the attack. As expected the fish strongly avoided the dark compartment and most sought shelter very quickly from the heron attack. Ethanol exposure significantly modulated these fear responses as well abolishing the preference for the light compartment and significantly slowing the fishes retreat to shelter during the simulated attack.##We hoped to see a correlation between the robotic Indian leaf fish test results and the results of the other anxiety tests and the data support that#Porfiri explains.##The majority of control group fish avoided the robotic predator preferred the light compartment and sought shelter quickly after the heron attack. Among ethanol-exposed fish there were many more who were unaffected by the robotic predator preferred the dark compartment and were slow to swim to shelter when attacked.##The National Science Foundation the Honors Center of Italian Universities and the Mitsui USA Foundation supported the research. Source: New york Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license i

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