Selective depression of neuronal excitability during habituation

Neural Cell Behavior and Fuzzy Logic

“…Habituation of identified neurons for defensive closure of the pneumostome in the Helix mollusk to tactile stimuli produced decrease in amplitude of the first synaptic AP in the response to habitual stimulus [1272]. At the same time, an AP in the response to the rare stimulus (another tactile stimulus, directed to other point of the body) did not change.…”

“…If the neuron recognizes a synaptic pattern, all together, the synapse may have a different efficacy, when it is included in different patterns [1264,1272,1292,1064]. This means that when single neuron recognizes a synaptic pattern, as a whole, synaptic memory does not exist at all.…”

“…Control of excitability may serve, too, as the means for modulation of neuronal activity. Excitability usually increases [1258,1355] during augmentation of the biological importance of the signal during conditioning and decreases when it falls during habituation [1266,1267,641,1272] and during extinction of conditioned reflexes [1259]. During instrumental learning, excitability also changes, but in a complex manner [881,1270,1351].…”

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

“…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.…”

“…However, there is no evidence that during normal learning, such as habituation, as well as classical and instrumental conditioning, the efficacy of the synapse changes independently from the activation of other synapses. If a neuron recognizes the pattern of active synapses as a whole [296,361,366], the problem of reaction specificity arises anew. 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].…”