Dance your PhD 2019 WINNER - Social experiences in larval zebrafish and their brains

We all know that animals move in coordinated ways. We see it everywhere, from flocks of birds or trails of ants collecting food to humans commuters during rush hour. But how do animals learn the rules that govern such coordinated motion? Do they just know how it works or are they learned from experience? And most importantly, what happens in the brain? This PhD work explored these questions by studying the movement of Zebrafish larvae (think of them as baby fish!). There were two groups, those fish that had social experiences as they grew up in groups and the fish that were raised in complete isolation. With this simple set-up there were distinct differences in the social interactions! The isolated fish were more antisocial and avoided other fish in an exaggerated way. “Hmm, but don’t we know this already from other animals and humans?” you might say. Yes, but there is a catch to replicating this result in the baby fish: Their heads are transparent and we can use light to measure the activit