Changes in postsynaptic and spike potentials of cortical neurons during habituation

Protection from neuronal damage evoked by a motivational excitation is a driving force of intentional actions

“…On the contrary, and in contradiction to a well-known neuronal property, neuronal responses decrease during habituation in the trials when the membrane potential decreases [358]. Correspondingly, after the acquisition of classical conditioning, conditioned response augmentation (Fig.…”

“…Another possible explanation for neuronal plasticity is a change in the properties of the excitable membrane [322,350,393] that is not completely consistent with the all-or-none principle [227]. Excitability usually increases [202,354,395] during augmentation of the biological importance of the signal and decreases [326,358,361] when it falls. This simple rule holds true for classical conditioning, habituation, dishabituation, and extinction.…”