There are a number of suspected causes for this behavior, including
partial epileptic seizures, hallucinations, and, in Cavaliers, a devastating disease called syringomyelia.
In the case of CHD2, scientists collaborating with the EuroEPINOMICS RES consortium used antisense technology to rapidly generate zebrafish larvae with a
partial loss of function of this gene, and were then able to detect
epileptic seizures in these animals using electrographic analysis (this method is very similar to electroencephalography, or EEG, which is used to analyze
seizures in humans).