title: Habituation of an invertebrate escape reflex due to modulation by higher centers rather than local events.
abstract: Learning is widely thought to result from altered potency of synapses within the neural pathways that mediate the learned behavior. Support for this belief, which pervades current physiological and computational thinking, comes especially from the analysis of cases of simple learning in invertebrates. Here, evidence is presented that in one such case, habituation of crayfish escape, the learning is more due to onset of tonic descending inhibition than to the intrinsic depression of circuit synapses to which it was previously attributed. Thus, the altered performance seems to depend at least as much on events in higher centers as on local plasticity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles 90024, USA.
authors.forename: F B
authors.initials: FB
authors.lastname: Krasne
authors.forename: T M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Teshiba
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003400:Astacoidea / Q000187:drug effects / Q000502:physiology*; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology*; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology*; D006613:Higher Nervous Activity / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009424:Nervous System Physiological Phenomena; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D019635:Neurosurgical Procedures; D010852:Picrotoxin / Q000494:pharmacology; D012018:Reflex / Q000502:physiology; D013569:Synapses / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D010852:Picrotoxin