Figure 4. TAX‐6/Calcineurin is required for exact adaptation and habituation.

• A
  Response dynamics of wt, tax‐6(p675), and tax‐6(p675) + AWA::TAX‐6 worms to a two‐step protocol: First step consisting of 5 min (bottom panels, $N=23,10,10$ worms respectively) or 1 min (top panel, $N=14$ wt worms. Biological replicates) of on step, followed by a 2 min, or 6 min off step, respectively, before applying a second short step (right panels). Wt worms exposed to the 5‐min step showed stronger habituation compared to worms exposed to the 1‐min‐long step ($P=9·{10}^{-4}$, Wilcoxon rank‐sum test between the amplitudes of the second steps). Steps are aligned to the maximal amplitude (at time 0).
• B, C
  Median neural activity (B) and normalized neural activity (C) of wt, tax‐6(p675), and tax‐6(p675) + AWA::TAX‐6 worms in response to the first step. Fitting the pulse decay with an exponent of the shape $a·e^{-x/\tau }+c$, tax‐6 mutants showed a longer decay time than wt worms, suggesting slower adaptation dynamics (${\tau }_{\mathit{\text{median}}}$ of $13.5$ and $5.6$ s, respectively, Wilcoxon rank‐sum test, $P=0.008$). ${\tau }_{\mathit{\text{median}}}$ of the rescue line was $7.3$ s, which was not significantly different from wt (Wilcoxon rank‐sum test, $P=0.26$). Color‐shaded area marks mean absolute deviation.
• D
  Comparison of the amplitudes in the first and the second step for wt, tax‐6(p675), and tax‐6(p675) + AWA::TAX‐6 worms (following the longer 5‐min step). All three strains showed a weaker activity in the second step (signed‐rank test, $P=2.6·{10}^{-4},0.014,0.01$, respectively), with tax‐6(p675) worms having a significantly higher amplitude than wt in both the first and second steps (Wilcoxon rank‐sum test, $P=1.8·{10}^{-4}$ and $1.1·{10}^{-4}$ respectively). Black bars mark the median. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.005.
• E
  The difference between the response amplitudes of the first and the second steps as a function of the first‐step amplitude. While wt worms show a higher amplitude difference when the response to the first step is stronger ($r=0.89,P=1.3·{10}^{-8}$), tax‐6(p675) mutants do not (r = 0.1, P = 0.78), suggesting that calcium influx affects habituation in wt worms but not in tax‐6(p675) mutants. The linear dependency in the rescued animals (tax‐6(p675) + AWA::TAX‐6) is higher than in tax‐6 mutants, though the correlation is not significant ($r=0.56,P=0.09$).

Source data are available online for this figure.