ArticleCurrent biology : CB2023
Single-cell analysis of habituation in Stentor coeruleus.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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25 citing papers in PubMed, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mathematical modeling for a primitive form of habituation in an amoeba.Journal of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Continual decision-making dynamics across biological organisms.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Molecular pathways for learning in the single-cell Stentor coeruleus.Current biology : CB · 2026Article
- Dynamical modeling of individual sensory reactivity and habituation learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Habituation and sensitization learning in adult solitary ascidians.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Geometrical preference of anchoring sites in the unicellular organismProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Stentor stipatus is a new unicellular species that demonstrates habituation and unique phototaxis.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Trainable computation in molecular networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A receptor-inactivation model for single-celled habituation in Stentor coeruleus.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Flow physics of nutrient transport drives functional design of ciliates.Nature communications · 2025Article
- On the prospects of basal cognition research becoming fully evolutionary: promising avenues and cautionary notes.History and philosophy of the life sciences · 2025Article
- Habituation but not classical conditioning of the disturbance hiss of the hissing cockroach (PeerJ · 2025Article
- The "plant neurobiology" revolution.Plant signaling & behavior · 2024Review
- Minimal motifs for habituating systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Habituation as optimal filtering.iScience · 2024Article
- Phylogeny, morphology, and behavior of the new ciliate speciesbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- SMORES: a simple microfluidic operating room for the examination and surgery of Stentor coeruleus.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Cell motility: Bioelectrical control of behavior without neurons.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- SMORES: A Simple Microfluidic Operating Room for the Examination and Surgery ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Perspectives on Principles of Cellular Behavior from the Biophysics of Protists.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
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14 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Although learning is often viewed as a unique feature of organisms with complex nervous systems, single-celled organisms also demonstrate basic forms of learning. The giant ciliate Stentor coeruleus responds to mechanical stimuli by contracting into a compact shape, presumably as a defense mechanism. When a Stentor cell is repeatedly stimulated at a constant level of force, it will learn to ignore that stimulus but will still respond to stronger stimuli. Prior studies of habituation in Stentor reported a graded response, suggesting that cells transition through a continuous range of response probabilities. By analyzing single cells using an automated apparatus to deliver calibrated stimuli, we find that habituation occurs via a single step-like switch in contraction probability within each cell, with the graded response in a population arising from the random distribution of switching times in individual cells. This step-like response allows Stentor behavior to be represented by a simple two-state model whose parameters can be estimated from experimental measurements. We find that transition rates depend on stimulus force and also on the time between stimuli. The ability to measure the behavior of the same cell to the same stimulus allowed us to quantify the functional heterogeneity among single cells. Together, our results suggest that the behavior of Stentor is governed by a two-state stochastic machine whose transition rates are sensitive to the time series properties of the input stimuli.
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