Figure 4.

Longitudinal tracking of swim recovery after spinal cord injury in adult zebrafish. (A) Schematic representing an overview of the tracking experiment. A total of 60 fish (30 males and 30 females) were housed separately throughout the entire experiment to allow for longitudinal tracking of individual fish throughout the study. Swim behavior was recorded prior to injury, and weekly between 1 and 8 wpi. At each time point, fish were video recorded in a swim tunnel for 15 min. In each 15-min assay, fish were first acclimated in the absence of water current for 5 min (0 cm/s), then water current velocity was increased to 10 cm/s at 5 min and to 20 cm/s at 10 min. (B–G) A suite of established functional measurements were used to assess swim recovery for male fish following SC transection. The swim recovery outcomes for female fish are shown in Supplementary Figure S1. Swim distance (B), activity as measured by centroid movement (C), time swimming against the flow (D), mean y-position in the axis of flow (E), and burst frequency as measured by centroid movement (F) represent swim capacity measurements. Perceived swim quality scores are shown in (G). This figure includes 30, 30, 30, 30, 29, 29, 28, 27, 27 fish at control, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 wpi assays, respectively. Error bars depict SEM and statistical significance was determined by Brown-Forsythe and Welch’s ANOVA tests with Dunnett’s T3 multiple comparisons tests. p-value markers in black represent comparisons between each time point post-injury relative to control measurements prior to injury. Red horizontal bars and p-values marked in red show significance between 1 wpi and 8 wpi. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05; ns, p > 0.05.