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Bk Channels Mediate Synaptic Plasticity Underlying Habituation In Rats, Tariq Zaman, Cleusa De Oliveira, Mahabba Smoka, Chakravarthi Narla, Michael O. Poulter, Susanne Schmid

Anatomy and Cell Biology Publications

Habituation is a basic form of implicit learning and represents a sensory filter that is disrupted in autism, schizophrenia, and several other mental disorders. Despite extensive research in the past decades on habituation of startle and other escape responses, the underlying neural mechanisms are still not fully understood. There is evidence from previous studies indicating that BK channels might play a critical role in habituation. We here used a wide array of approaches to test this hypothesis. We show that BK channel activation and subsequent phosphorylation of these channels are essential for synaptic depression presumably underlying startle habituation in rats, …