In the presence of temperature gradients larval zebrafish pay more attention to temperature stimuli

What is it about?

Environmental stimuli can be the result of changes in the environment or be the result of actions we take. For example, we might experience a mechanical stimulus because someone touches us or because we touch someone else. Distinguishing these cases helps animals and humans to optimize the interpretation of stimuli to generate appropriate behavioral responses. We discovered, that larval zebrafish can distinguish whether changes in temperature are the result of their own behavior or not. If changes in temperature are caused by behavior, it signals to the animal that it can use behavior to thermoregulate. We discovered that larval zebrafish will accordingly pay more attention to temperature stimuli under these conditions. This manifests as temperature having a larger influence on behavioral output presumably optimizing behavior for thermoregulation while suppressing such behaviors under conditions where the environment does not allow for behavioral thermoregulation.

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Photo by Dominik Lange on Unsplash

Photo by Dominik Lange on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Seeking out comfortable temperatures is is critical for thermoregulation even in mammals that can regulate their body temperature through sweating, muscle shivering, etc. However, such behavioral thermoregulation is only possible if different places within the environment have different temperatures. Whether animals are able to detect these conditions, and how they might do so was largely unknown. Here, we discover that larval zebrafish can indeed identify conditions that are amenable to behavioral thermoregulation. Furthermore we can show that they likely detect such conditions using mixed-selectivity neurons that integrate temperature information with information about behaviors generated by the animal. This provides critical insight into how animals optimize behavior to environmental conditions in the context of thermoregulation.