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In teleosts, changes in swimming, exploring, general locomotor activity, and anxious state can be a response to stress mediated by the corticotropin-releasing hormone system activation and its effects on glucocorticoid levels. Zebrafish has been widely used to study neuropharmacology and has become a promising animal model to investigate neurobehavioral mechanisms of stress. In this report the animals were submitted to acute restraint stress for different time lengths (15, 60 and 90 min) for further evaluation of behavioral patterns, whole-body cortisol content, and corticotropin-releasing hormone expression. The results demonstrated an increase in the locomotor activity and an alteration in the swimming pattern during a 5-min trial after the acute restraint stress. Interestingly, all groups of fish tested in the novel tank test exhibited signs of anxiety as evaluated by the time spent in the bottom of the tank. Whole-body cortisol content showed a positive correlation with increased behavioral indices of locomotion in zebrafish whereas molecular analysis of corticotropin-releasing hormone showed a late reduction of mRNA expression (90 min). Altogether, we present a model of acute restraint stress in zebrafish, confirmed by elevated cortisol content, as a valid and reliable model to study the biochemical basis of stress behavior, which seems to be accompanied by a negative feedback of corticotropin-release hormone mRNA expression.

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