Fig. 4.

Characteristics of GABA_A receptor desensitization. a Rundown. When GABA_A receptors are exposed to frequent GABA transients, a portion of the receptor population desensitizes at each transient and does not recover before the next exposure, resulting in a decrease in peak amplitude. b Biphasic desensitization. The current decay upon desensitization can often be modeled as the sum of two decreasing exponential components. A global desensitization rate can be computed from the characteristic time (τ) of each component.