Social behavior of zebrafish: From synthetic images to biological mechanisms of shoaling

• Shoaling is a robust species-typical feature of zebrafish that is easy to induce.
• Shoaling may be quantified as a response to computer animated images.
• Dynamic changes in the shoal have started to be analyzed in zebrafish.
• Zebrafish shoaling paradigms are potential tools for the analysis of human CNS disorders.
• The use of these paradigms in alcohol research is also reviewed.

The zebrafish strikes a good balance between system complexity and practical simplicity and as a result it is becoming increasingly frequently utilized in biomedical research as a translational tool. Numerous human brain disorders are associated with abnormal social behavior and the zebrafish has been suggested for modeling such disorders. To start this line of research, however, one may need to first thoroughly examine the laboratory organism, zebrafish, and its features, social behavior in this case. Proper methods need be developed to induce and quantify social behavior. These paradigms may be able to open a window to the brain and facilitate the understanding of the biological mechanisms of social behavior and its abnormalities. This review is based on an oral paper presented at the last Measuring Behavior Conference, and as such it is mainly focused on research conducted in my own laboratory. Tracing the temporal progression of our own work, it discusses questions including what shoaling is, how it can be induced and measured and how it can be utilized in the modeling of certain human brain disorders, for example, alcohol induced abnormalities.