Author:

Keywords:

Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Cell Biology, NEGATIVE REWARD SIGNALS, LEFT-RIGHT ASYMMETRY, LATERAL HABENULA, INTERPEDUNCULAR NUCLEUS, AVOIDANCE, ONTOGENY, NEURONS, MEMORY, BRAIN, IDENTIFICATION, behavioral flexibility, cognition, conditioned place avoidance, habenula, learning, memory consolidation, memory extinction, operant conditioning, reversal learning, zebrafish, Animals, Behavior, Animal, Habenula, Zebrafish, 0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology, 1116 Medical Physiology, 31 Biological sciences

Abstract:

Operant learning requires multiple cognitive processes, such as learning, prediction of potential outcomes, and decision-making. It is less clear how interactions of these processes lead to the behavioral adaptations that allow animals to cope with a changing environment. We show that juvenile zebrafish can perform conditioned place avoidance learning, with improving performance across development. Ablation of the dorsolateral habenula (dlHb), a brain region involved in associative learning and prediction of outcomes, leads to an unexpected improvement in performance and delayed memory extinction. Interestingly, the control animals exhibit rapid adaptation to a changing learning rule, whereas dlHb-ablated animals fail to adapt. Altogether, our results show that the dlHb plays a central role in switching animals' strategies while integrating new evidence with prior experience.