Tropes

futurity_sci_tech 01071.txt

#To study alcohol: More robots, fewer animals? New york University rightoriginal Studyposted by Kathleen Hamilton-NYU on June 7 2013nyu (US)# Robotic fish could reduce the number of live animals needed to study the effects of alcohol on behavior and the brain scientists say. A team of researchers introduced a robot designed to replicate the color pattern and tail beat motion of a fertile female zebrafish into shoals of live zebrafish. The species is highly social and in prior experiments showed a consistently strong affinity for this robotic member. The goal was to test whether alcohol could affect this well-established preference. Three groups of fish were treated with varying doses of ethanol in water#zero percent (control group) 0. 25 percent and 1 percent by volume. These doses represent acute administration and cause neither lasting effect nor harm to the fish. The control group behaved as expected showing a marked preference for the robotic member assessed by the amount of time the fish spent in close proximity to the robot. The two ethanol-exposed groups deviated significantly from this pattern spending more time in other regions of the tank. Robots+live animalsthis is the first study to demonstrate use of robotic stimuli to study reward-related behavior in zebrafish and shows how the emerging field of ethorobotics#the interaction of biologically inspired robots with live animals#might change longstanding research models.##One of the major advantages of robotics is that we can provide a fully controllable consistent stimulus for the zebrafish#says Maurizio Porfiri associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the Polytechnic institute of New york University (NYU-Poly.##The traditional stimulus in these experiments is another animal but individual variations can affect the results.##Robotic fish don t feel fatigue. Their tail beat frequency never changes. Every time we introduce the stimulus it s identical making the results much cleaner.##Porfiri and colleagues describe the method and detail the results of the fish experiments in the current issue of the journal Alcohol.##What we know right now is that robots can be a uniquely repetitive stimulus for those investigating the effects of alcohol on behavior#Porfiri adds.##The innovation here is the method#we ve taken one of the elements of experimentation that can vary and standardized it.##What s next? Study collaborator and research scientist Simone Macr##from the Italian Institute of Health adds:##Such standardization was mirrored indeed by the live fish which behaved more consistently when confronted with the robot than when confronted with a live companion.##This aspect holds promise to reduce the number of live animals used in preclinical research.##Relatively little data exist to indicate how #or if#alcohol affects the cognitive abilities of zebrafish. The researchers believe that the change in behavior under the influence of alcohol may be attributed to impaired shoaling instincts or a shift in the incentive value of the robot from the fishes perspective. In the next phase the team plans to deploy a robotic predator to test the impact of alcohol on the zebrafishes sense of fear as well as evaluating whether exposure impacts fishes willingness to make efforts to shoal with a robotic member. The National Science Foundation and the Honors Center of Italian Universities supported the project. Source: NYUYOU are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license s

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