Direction-specific adaptation in neuronal and behavioral responses of an insect mechanosensory system

Stimulus-specific adaptation (SSA) is considered to be the neural underpinning of habituation to frequent stimuli and novelty detection. However, neither the cellular mechanism underlying SSA nor the link between SSA-like neuronal plasticity and behavioral modulation is well understood. The wind-detection system in crickets is one of the best models for investigating the neural basis of SSA. We found that crickets exhibit stimulus-direction-specific adaptation in wind-elicited avoidance behavior. Repetitive air currents inducing this behavioral adaptation reduced firings to the stimulus and the amplitude of excitatory synaptic potentials in wind-sensitive giant interneurons (GIs) related to the avoidance behavior. Injection of a Ca²⁺ chelator into GIs diminished both the attenuation of firings and the synaptic depression induced by the repetitive stimulation, suggesting that adaptation of GIs induced by this stimulation results in Ca²⁺-mediated modulation of postsynaptic responses, including postsynaptic short-term depression. Some types of GIs showed specific adaptation to the direction of repetitive stimuli, resulting in an alteration of their directional tuning curves. The types of GIs for which directional tuning was altered displayed heterogeneous direction selectivity in their Ca²⁺ dynamics that was restricted to a specific area of dendrites. In contrast, other types of GIs with constant directionality exhibited direction-independent global Ca²⁺ elevation throughout the dendritic arbor. These results suggest that depression induced by local Ca²⁺ accumulation at repetitively activated synapses of key neurons underlies direction-specific behavioral adaptation. This input-selective depression mediated by heterogeneous Ca²⁺ dynamics could confer the ability to detect novelty at the earliest stages of sensory processing in crickets.