To explore the role of neurons in behavior we film the fish at high speeds to observe how the behavior changes when we remove or activate neurons in the circuits in brain or spinal cord.
HIGH SPEED (1000 frames a second) fiming reveals a fish responds to a squirt of water by getting away in a few 100ths of a second.
The importance of the fast escape behavior for fish survival is shown here, where it is used to avoid being eaten by a larval dragon fly.