Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli
Biological and living systems process information across spatiotemporal scales, exhibiting the hallmark ability to constantly modulate their behavior to ever-changing and complex environments. In the presence of repeated stimuli, a distinctive response is the progressive reduction of the activity at...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
2025-07-01
|
| Series: | eLife |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://elifesciences.org/articles/99767 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1850078801527046144 |
|---|---|
| author | Giorgio Nicoletti Matteo Bruzzone Samir Suweis Marco dal Maschio Daniel Maria Busiello |
| author_facet | Giorgio Nicoletti Matteo Bruzzone Samir Suweis Marco dal Maschio Daniel Maria Busiello |
| author_sort | Giorgio Nicoletti |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Biological and living systems process information across spatiotemporal scales, exhibiting the hallmark ability to constantly modulate their behavior to ever-changing and complex environments. In the presence of repeated stimuli, a distinctive response is the progressive reduction of the activity at both sensory and molecular levels, known as habituation. In this work, we solve a minimal microscopic model devoid of biological details, where habituation to an external signal is driven by negative feedback provided by a slow storage mechanism. We show that our model recapitulates the main features of habituation, such as spontaneous recovery, potentiation, subliminal accumulation, and input sensitivity. Crucially, our approach enables a complete characterization of the stochastic dynamics, allowing us to compute how much information the system encodes on the input signal. We find that an intermediate level of habituation is associated with a steep increase in information. In particular, we are able to characterize this region of maximal information gain in terms of an optimal trade-off between information and energy consumption. We test our dynamical predictions against experimentally recorded neural responses in a zebrafish larva subjected to repeated looming stimulations, showing that our model captures the main components of the observed neural habituation. Our work makes a fundamental step towards uncovering the functional mechanisms that shape habituation in biological systems from an information-theoretic and thermodynamic perspective. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-4d4111fe588e4c708f683fadcb6977d8 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2050-084X |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-07-01 |
| publisher | eLife Sciences Publications Ltd |
| record_format | Article |
| series | eLife |
| spelling | doaj-art-4d4111fe588e4c708f683fadcb6977d82025-08-20T02:45:28ZengeLife Sciences Publications LtdeLife2050-084X2025-07-011310.7554/eLife.99767Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuliGiorgio Nicoletti0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7682-0596Matteo Bruzzone1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7683-8107Samir Suweis2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1603-8375Marco dal Maschio3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0150-6647Daniel Maria Busiello4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6754-5019ECHO Laboratory, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland; Quantitative Life Sciences section, The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy; Department of Physics and Astronomy “Galileo Galilei”, University of Padova, Padova, ItalyDepartment of Biomedical Science, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, SwitzerlandDepartment of Physics and Astronomy “Galileo Galilei”, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Padova, ItalyDepartment of Biomedical Science, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Padova Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, Padova, ItalyDepartment of Physics and Astronomy “Galileo Galilei”, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, GermanyBiological and living systems process information across spatiotemporal scales, exhibiting the hallmark ability to constantly modulate their behavior to ever-changing and complex environments. In the presence of repeated stimuli, a distinctive response is the progressive reduction of the activity at both sensory and molecular levels, known as habituation. In this work, we solve a minimal microscopic model devoid of biological details, where habituation to an external signal is driven by negative feedback provided by a slow storage mechanism. We show that our model recapitulates the main features of habituation, such as spontaneous recovery, potentiation, subliminal accumulation, and input sensitivity. Crucially, our approach enables a complete characterization of the stochastic dynamics, allowing us to compute how much information the system encodes on the input signal. We find that an intermediate level of habituation is associated with a steep increase in information. In particular, we are able to characterize this region of maximal information gain in terms of an optimal trade-off between information and energy consumption. We test our dynamical predictions against experimentally recorded neural responses in a zebrafish larva subjected to repeated looming stimulations, showing that our model captures the main components of the observed neural habituation. Our work makes a fundamental step towards uncovering the functional mechanisms that shape habituation in biological systems from an information-theoretic and thermodynamic perspective.https://elifesciences.org/articles/99767habituationinformation theorynonequilibrium systems |
| spellingShingle | Giorgio Nicoletti Matteo Bruzzone Samir Suweis Marco dal Maschio Daniel Maria Busiello Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli eLife habituation information theory nonequilibrium systems |
| title | Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli |
| title_full | Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli |
| title_fullStr | Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli |
| title_full_unstemmed | Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli |
| title_short | Optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli |
| title_sort | optimal information gain at the onset of habituation to repeated stimuli |
| topic | habituation information theory nonequilibrium systems |
| url | https://elifesciences.org/articles/99767 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT giorgionicoletti optimalinformationgainattheonsetofhabituationtorepeatedstimuli AT matteobruzzone optimalinformationgainattheonsetofhabituationtorepeatedstimuli AT samirsuweis optimalinformationgainattheonsetofhabituationtorepeatedstimuli AT marcodalmaschio optimalinformationgainattheonsetofhabituationtorepeatedstimuli AT danielmariabusiello optimalinformationgainattheonsetofhabituationtorepeatedstimuli |