Fish on the Atypical Antipsychotic Seroquel and their Performance on an Avoidance Test

Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Beulig, Jr., Alfred

Keywords

Seroquel, Cortisol, Goldfish

Area of Concentration

Biological Psychology

Abstract

Seroquel is an antipsychotic drug that may have a positive effect on cognition. The shuttlebox avoidance task is a way to measure cognition. The goal of this experiment is to determine whether the drug Seroquel has any effect on shuttlebox avoidance. A possible mode of action of Seroquel is the reduction of stress and consequent enhancement of cognitive ability and may have clinical significance. In this study chronic stress was produced by the injection of cortisol. In this study, sixty-four subjects were randomly assigned to four groups of 16 fish: 1) fish given Seroquel in aquarium water and injected with cortisol; 2) fish given Seroquel only and injected with water; 3) fish injected with cortisol; 4) control group injected only with water. The hypothesis was that the experimental fish given the Seroquel would perform a greater number of avoids than fish not given Seroquel. The results showed no significant difference in performance between groups given Seroquel and groups not given Seroquel. However, the fish injected with cortisol performed significantly better than the control group on Seroquel with water. These results may indicate that the goldfish used in this experiment were less affected by cortisol in producing stress due to being domesticated, this may have provided an optimal amount of stress for avoidance performance.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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