Tuqan Mohammad, Porfiri Maurizio
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, New York University, Tandon School of Engineering, New York, USA.
Center for Urban Science + Progress, New York University, New York, USA.
Front Appl Math Stat. 2021;7. doi: 10.3389/fams.2021.751351. Epub 2021 Oct 14.
Zebrafish is a model organism that is receiving considerable attention in preclinical research. Particularly important is the use of zebrafish in behavioral pharmacology, where a number of high-throughput experimental paradigms have been proposed to quantify the effect of psychoactive substances consequences on individual and social behavior. In an effort to assist experimental research and improve animal welfare, we propose a mathematical model for the social behavior of groups of zebrafish swimming in a shallow water tank in response to the administration of psychoactive compounds to select individuals. We specialize the mathematical model to caffeine, a popular anxiogenic compound. Each fish is assigned to a Markov chain that describes transitions between freezing and swimming. When swimming, zebrafish locomotion is modeled as a pair of coupled stochastic differential equations, describing the time evolution of the turn-rate and speed in response to caffeine administration. Comparison with experimental results demonstrates the accuracy of the model and its potential use in the design of experiments.
斑马鱼是一种在临床前研究中受到广泛关注的模式生物。斑马鱼在行为药理学中的应用尤为重要，在该领域已经提出了许多高通量实验范式来量化精神活性物质对个体和社会行为的影响。为了协助实验研究并改善动物福利，我们提出了一个数学模型，用于描述在浅水箱中游泳的斑马鱼群体在给予精神活性化合物后对选定个体的社会行为反应。我们将该数学模型应用于咖啡因，一种常见的致焦虑化合物。每条鱼都被分配到一个马尔可夫链，该链描述了静止和游动之间的转换。当斑马鱼游动时，其运动被建模为一对耦合的随机微分方程，描述了给予咖啡因后转向率和速度的时间演化。与实验结果的比较证明了该模型的准确性及其在实验设计中的潜在用途。
