A Neural Model of Synaptic Plasticity Underlying Short-term and Long-term Habituation

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that short-term habituation may be caused by a decrease in release of presynaptic neurotransmitters and long-term habituation seems to be caused by morphological changes of presynaptic terminals. A parsimonious model of short-term and long-term synaptic plasticity at the electrophysiological level is presented. This model consists of two interacting differential equations, one describing alterations of the synaptic weight and the other describing changes to the speed of recovery (forgetting). The latter exhibits an inverse S-shaped curve whose high value corresponds to fast recovery (short-term habituation) and low value corresponds to slow recovery (long-term habituation). The model has been tested on short-term and a set of long-term habituation data of prey-catching behavior in toads, spanning minutes to hours to several weeks.