Fig. 5.

Plasticity in regenerative membrane properties. a After contingent reinforcement, the capacity of B51 to produce burst-generating plateau potentials (as is evident from brief depolarizing current pulse injections) is increased as compared to same cell type in control (left) and non-contingent (right) preparations. b An intrinsic oscillatory capability of a single B63 neuron can be revealed by continuous membrane depolarization during coincident hyperpolarization of the contralateral B63 (B63c) to prevent the activation of the other pattern-initiating neurons and CPG circuitry (see also Fig. 3d). In control (left) and non-contingent (right) ganglia, such a functionally isolated B63 generates infrequent and irregular bursts, as indicated by the corresponding autocorrelation histograms (lower). In contrast, after contingent reinforcement, B63 produces accelerated and regularized repetitive bursting as indicated by the sinusoidal Gabor function fit (solid line) to the corresponding autocorrelation histogram