Zebrafish аs а Promising Experimental Model of Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) involves various types of physical injuries to brain tissue. TBI is a highly heterogeneous clinical condition, whose symptoms include cognitive, motor and emotional deficits, as well as neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. Animal modeling plays a key role in studying TBI, expanding our knowledge of TBI and its temporal dynamics, and to develop new drugs for its treatment. Recently, the use of the bony zebrafish (Danio rerio) as an aquatic model organism has attracted particular interest in translational neurobiology. Zebrafish are presently second (after mice) laboratory animal species most used in biomedicine. Here, we discuss the prospects of using zebrafish to model TBI, as well as problems and new directions of research in this area. We also emphasize the importance of zebrafish as a highly translational model for studying the molecular mechanisms and neurological disorders in TBI, as well as screening for potential therapeutic agents.