Zebrafish Conditioned Place Preference

The zebrafish conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm measures the rewarding or aversive properties of pharmacological compounds by pairing drug exposure with a visually distinct compartment in a two-chamber aquatic apparatus. Each compartment features unique visual cues on the floor and walls, such as vertical versus horizontal stripes, dots versus checkerboard patterns, or distinct colors, creating discriminable contexts. The teleost mesolimbic reward system, centered on dopaminergic projections from the posterior tuberculum to the ventral telencephalon (the zebrafish homologue of the ventral tegmental area to nucleus accumbens pathway), encodes place-reward associations that drive the post-conditioning preference shift.

The protocol follows a three-phase design: pre-conditioning baseline (measuring initial compartment preference), conditioning sessions (alternating drug-paired and vehicle-paired exposures over 3-5 days), and a post-conditioning preference test conducted drug-free. The primary dependent variable is the CPP score, calculated as post-conditioning time in the drug-paired compartment minus pre-conditioning time in the same compartment. Additional measures include total transitions between compartments, latency to enter the drug-paired side, mean distance from the drug-paired wall, and locomotor activity during conditioning and test sessions to distinguish reward-seeking from stimulant-induced hyperlocomotion.

ConductMaze manages the full multi-day CPP workflow with automated phase scheduling, compartment assignment based on initial bias (biased or unbiased design), and consistent zone tracking across sessions. The system records compartment occupancy, transition counts, and locomotor metrics per phase, generating within-subject preference shift analyses and group-level CPP score comparisons. Session templates enforce balanced drug-vehicle assignment and counterbalanced compartment pairing.