Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Program

Cognitive Neuroscience

Advisor

Thomas Preuss

Committee Members

Sebastian Alvarado

Subject Categories

Behavior and Ethology | Cognitive Neuroscience | Cognitive Science | Comparative Psychology | Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Keywords

sleep deprivation, A.burtoni, social behavior, prepulse inhibition

Abstract

Sleep is critical for maintaining cognitive and social functioning across species, yet the effects of sleep deprivation on social behavior remain poorly understood.  In this study, we addressed this question in African cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni where social behavior and status are flexible and can be readily quantified (Fernald, 1997; Fulmer et al., 2017). Moreover, preliminary results show a sleep-like state in A. burtoni characterized by elevated arousal thresholds to acoustic stimuli during nighttime (Nguyen, 2025). Here, we investigated how sleep deprivation influences antagonistic behavior and social status in A. burtoni.  Across four experiments, we quantified community-level and individual-level behaviors, including chase frequency and dominance index (DI) under control and sleep-deprived conditions. Total sleep deprivation increased antagonistic behavior (chases) in cichlid mixed sex communities, while partial sleep deprivation had no effects on aggression. Despite these behavioral changes, dominance hierarchies remained stable, with no significant increase in rank transitions. Together, these results indicate that sleep deprivation decouples aggression from effective dominance expression, enhancing social friction at the group level without disrupting established social structures. Another aspect of this study was to ask how sleep deprivation affects attention, specifically prepulse inhibition (PPI), which is a sensorimotor gating phenomenon that is widely used to measure basic information filtering.  Our results showed that PPI is enhanced in males and females. Together, our results suggest that sleep is a key modulator of social behavior and information processing, which emphasizes that A. burtoni is a well-suited model for investigating the interactions between sleep, social behavior, and neural function.

Download

This work is embargoed and will be available for download on Tuesday, February 01, 2028

Share

COinS