Habituation revisited: An updated and revised description of the behavioral characteristics of habituation

Abstract

The most commonly cited descriptions of the behavioral characteristics of habituation come from two papers published almost 40 years ago (Thompson and Spencer, 1966;Groves and Thompson, 1970). In August 2007, the authors of this review, who study habituation in a wide range of species and paradigms, met to discuss their work on habituation and to revisit and refine the characteristics of habituation. This review offers a re-evaluation of the characteristics of habituation in light of these discussions. We made substantial changes to only a few of the characteristics, usually to add new information and expand upon the description rather than to substantially alter the original point.In the 20 th century, great progress was made in understanding the behavioral characteristics of habituation. A landmark paper published by Thompson and Spencer in 1966 clarified the definition of habituation, synthesized the research to date and presented a list of nine behavioral characteristics of habituation that appeared to be common in all organisms studied The history of habituation and the historical context of Thompson & Spencer's (1966) distillation are reviewed more fully in an article by Thompson (2009) that is included in this issue. This list was repeated and expanded upon by Groves and Thompson in 1970. These two papers are now citation classics and are considered to be the authorities on the characteristics of habituation. In August 2007, a group of 15 researchers (the authors of this review) who study habituation in a wide range of species and paradigms met to revisit these characteristics and refine them based on the 40 years of research since Thompson and Spencer 1966. The descriptions and characteristics from 1966 have held up remarkably well, and the revisions we have made to them were often for clarity rather than content. We made substantial changes to only a few of the characteristics, usually to add new information and expand upon the description rather than to substantially alter the original point. We restricted ourselves to an analysis of habituation; there was insufficient time for detailed discussions of the other form of non-associative learning "sensitization." Thus this review is restricted to our discussions of habituation and dishabituation (as it relates directly to habituation).Many people will be surprised to learn that, although habituation is termed "the simplest form of learning" and is well studied behaviorally, remarkably little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying habituation. Researchers who work on this form of learning believe that because habituation allows animals to filter out irrelevant stimuli and focus selectively on

Analgesia to pressure–pain develops in the ipsilateral forehead after high- and low-frequency electrical stimulation of the forearm

“…Furthermore, pain rose during HFS but decreased gradually during LFS conditioning, possibly due to habituation or the development of long term depression in spinal nociceptive pathways (Biurrun Manresa et al 2010;Klein et al 2004;Rankin et al 2009;Rottmann et al 2008). Despite these differences, decreases in sensitivity to pressurepain in the forehead were similar after both forms of electrical stimulation, suggesting that HFS and LFS triggered similar pain inhibitory processes.…”

Altered processing of sensory stimuli in patients with migraine

“…The properties and characteristics of habituation 27 have been revised and refined, 28 but the underlying neural mecha nisms are still not completely understood. Habituation has multiple roles, ranging from pruning of irrelevant information to protection of the cerebral cortex against overstimulation.…”

“…The results have provided three main sets of observations, which were consistent across most studies. First, between attacks, a stimulus frequency dependent increase occurs in photic driving and synchronization of EEG alpha (8-13 Hz) and beta (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) rhythms. Second, the interictal migrain ous brain is characterized by a habituation (or adapta tion) deficit of cortical evoked responses to repetitive, non noxious sensory stimuli-this deficit normalizes during an attack.…”

Impact of observing hand hygiene in practice and research: a methodological reconsideration

“…Although regarded as effective 39 , habituation is seldom used in hand hygiene research and the WHO 5 does not provide practical guidance on how it should be applied. Indication of its possible effectiveness can be traced to the work of Harbarth et al 40 in which compliance declined over a two week audit period in which staff appeared to forget about the presence of auditors.…”