Zebrafish Neuroscience at HKUST

We use zebrafish as a genetic model system to study the neural circuits that produce visual behaviors. In the larval stage, the fish are transparent, which allows the deployment of imaging and optogenetic techniques in any area of the brain in intact, behaving animals. Zebrafish larvae exhibit multiple innate visual behaviors, such as prey capture and escape, allowing us to link visual input to specific motor outputs. We use a combination of quantitative analysis of behavior, two-photon functional imaging, single cell neuroanatomy, and genetic and optical manipulations of neural activity to follow behavioral circuits through the larval zebrafish brain.