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Abstract Animals differ in their ability to learn. One potential factor contributing to learning differences is personality types. We investigated the relationship between learning and the bold-shy continuum by comparing performance of bold and shy zebrafish in conditioned place preference (CPP) and 2 choice tasks. Bold fish learned significantly faster than the shy fish but there were no differences in their final performance. When tested in the 2 choice task, we found no clear evidence of learning, however bold fish made more initial choices than shy fish. Overall,our study suggests that bold fish tend to be faster learners when compared to shy fish. The lack of differences in the final change in behavior suggests that the learning difference is due to neophobic tendencies and resulting initial interactions with the learning stimulus. 

Abstract Learning to anticipate potentially dangerous contexts is an adaptive behavioral response to coping with stressors. An animal’s stress coping style (e.g. proactive–reactive axis) is known to influence how it encodes salient events. However, the neural and molecular mechanisms underlying these stress coping style differences in learning are unknown. Further, while a number of neuroplasticity-related genes have been associated with alternative stress coping styles, it is unclear if these genes may bias the development of conditioned behavioral responses to stressful stimuli, and if so, which brain regions are involved. Here, we trained adult zebrafish to associate a naturally aversive olfactory cue with a given context. Next, we investigated if expression of two neural plasticity and neurotransmission-related genes ( npas4a and gabbr1a ) were associated with the contextual fear conditioning differences between proactive and reactive stress coping styles. Reactive zebrafish developed a stronger conditioned fear response and showed significantly higher npas4a expression in the medial and lateral zones of the dorsal telencephalon (Dm, Dl), and the supracommissural nucleus of the ventral telencephalon (Vs). Our findings suggest that the expression of activity-dependent genes like npas4a may be differentially expressed across several interconnected forebrain regions in response to fearful stimuli and promote biases in fear learning among different stress coping styles.