Development of an innovative operant conditioning procedure to investigate cognitive abilities in zebrafish larvae (Danio rerio)

The main focus of this thesis are the largely uninvestigated cognitive capacities of memory and learning in newborn zebrafish, Danio rerio. Throughout the detailed analysis of the experimental design of an operant conditioning procedure conducted by Santacà et al, 2022 (a two-alternative forced-choice tasks) at the laboratory of Animal and Comparative Psychology I intended to replicate the study overcoming some experimental limitations emerged. The final goal of the study is to be able to construct a procedure for operant conditioning of larvae of Zebrafish easily replicable and efficient, meaning using the less possible steps to reach the results, a conditioned behavior in these model animals. The operant conditioning procedure with appetitive reward, was administrated in a first experiment to individual larvae and in a second experiment collectively to a group of forty larvae. In both experiments, I found only a weak evidence that discrimination learning had occurred, suggesting that neither procedure was able to overcome the limitation that emerged in previous study.