Virtual social interaction reveals that the dorsal habenula-IPN pathway is essential for targeting the opponent.

Overview

1. RIKEN Center for Brain Science, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
2. School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 2-2 Wakamatsu-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan
3. Department of Life Science, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
4. Institute of Neuropsychiatry, 91 Benten-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0851, Japan

Abstract

Conspecific social interaction is among the most important brain functions to be investigated. We designed a virtual reality (VR) system that enables real-time teleportation of head-fixed adult zebrafish movements onto their 3D avatars. To facilitate dyadic fight-like behavior in the VR space, we devised a task in which avoidance of periodic mild electric stimulation is achieved by attacking the opponent, and a transient electric shock acts as negative feedback for bite-like events. Moreover, a transgenic fish with an impaired dorsolateral habenula-to-interpeduncular nucleus pathway, known as a winner’s circuit in social conflict, showed reduced ability in placing the opponent in the field of binocular view and attacking the opponent, while also showing increased use of the left eye. These indicate the importance of the winner’s circuit in correctly aligning the body axis for capturing the opponent. The proposed VR system can be effective in investigating how the brain encodes various social interactions.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

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The paper's code and data availability statement is in the Data section.

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Data

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Data and code availability

• All behavior data reported in this study are available in the following public repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16809628. • All programming codes used to create virtual reality for social interaction are available with the following https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16809628. • Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this paper are available from the lead contact upon request.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 28 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 5 authors, 3 keywords, 2 funders, 52 references.

Cite

This paper

Islam, T., Torigoe, M., Tanimoto, Y., Chou, M.-Y., & Okamoto, H. (2026). Virtual social interaction reveals that the dorsal habenula-IPN pathway is essential for targeting the opponent. iScience, 29(5), 115566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2026.115566

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