{
  "abstract": "Habituation--the decrement in response to a series of stimuli--is a widespread form of learning observed across many organisms, including the unicellular organism Stentor coeruleus. A lesser-known feature of Stentor habituation, shared with animals, is potentiation: faster habituation to a second stimulus series despite partial or complete recovery of responsiveness before that series begins. This form of metaplasticity suggests that although the first-order habituation memory can decay during the recovery period between the two series, a persistent second-order memory mediates faster relearning. We investigate the response profile of Stentor across a range of stimulation frequencies and recovery periods to identify the timescales at which these memory traces operate. We introduce a statistical framework to infer both population and single-cell learning parameters, allowing us to quantify prior qualitative findings and examine relationships among parameters across cells. Two key findings are that potentiation is frequency-sensitive, and that recovery and potentiation are decoupled, consistent with a serial and hierarchical cascade of leaky integrator units underlying these processes. This quantitative portrait provides a foundation for mechanistic modeling of intracellular memory in Stentor.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Harvard University"
  ],
  "article_type": "New results",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "T. Ramdas"
    },
    {
      "name": "N. Doan"
    },
    {
      "name": "A. Theroux"
    },
    {
      "name": "S. J. Gershman"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/04aja63msqpf9.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.64898/2026.06.09.731162",
  "fulltext_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731162v2.full",
  "id": "04aja63msqpf9",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731162v2",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-NC",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-NC",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "biorxiv",
      "cell biology"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2805|Memory and Neural Mechanisms"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7164173787",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731162v2.full.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-06-09",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/04aja63msqpf9.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:26:28Z",
      "native_id": "10.64898/2026.06.09.731162",
      "source": "biorxiv",
      "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.09.731162v2"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "biorxiv:cell biology",
      "subfield": "cell-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "A quantitative portrait of habituation in Stentor coeruleus",
  "title_text": "A quantitative portrait of habituation in Stentor coeruleus",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:26:28Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/04aja63msqpf9",
  "venue": "bioRxiv",
  "versions": []
}