Crayfish escape behavior and central synapses. I. Neural circuit exciting lateral giant fiber.

Abstract

responsible for exciting the lateral giant neuron and initiating single tail flips in response to phasic mechanical stimuli to the tail of crayfish. It was shown that the exci-tation of some tactile interneurons by tac-tile afferents antifacilitates extensively at low repetition rates. This phenomenon must be presumed to contribute to the habituation of the response. It is not clear, however, that this is the only phenomenon responsible for generating lability in the behavior. Receptor fatigue, variable proper-ties of the excitable membranes of the lat-eral giant or the tactile interneurons, or labile properties of the circuit efferent to