Startle Habituation: A Tool for Assessing Information Processing Deficits in Zebrafish Model of Schizophrenia

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) and habituation of acoustic startle reflex have been extensively used to assess deficits in the sensorimotor functions human patients animal models schizophrenia. These assays require expensive sophisticated experimental setup for fine control stimuli sound attenuation. In this study, we investigate whether assay based on mechanical (tap) can induce similar impairment response schizophrenia model larval zebrafish. For purpose, a custom apparatus consisting 9 V push pull solenoid an Arduino Uno microcontroller was generate tap at desired intervals. Our results showed that 1 Hz effectively evoked fishes which habituated after few trials. The significantly impaired MK801-induced model, elicited by previous study. We propose simple inexpensive method as alternative tool studying information processing attention pharmacological