0 to cause someone to experience something, usually an emotion or a pain, less strongly than before:
Seeing too much violence on television can desensitize people to it.
Such an opsin could possibly respond to the 360-nm stimuli but should also be desensitized by our strong orange adapting light.
During development, tissues can adjust or desensitize in response to environmental conditions through changes in receptor concentration.
It has long been suggested that the accumulation of metarhodopsins is a desensitizing factor that elevates visual threshold after substantial rhodopsin bleaches.
First, one or more photoreceptor types can be desensitized by adaptation thereby leaving the remaining photoreceptors to respond to the stimulus.
If high levels of glutamate desensitize the postsynaptic receptors, a smaller change in membrane potential for a given change in glutamate concentration is expected.
Release of glutamate, in contrast, might desensitize glutamatergic receptors, thus, reducing glutamate synaptic transmission.
Perhaps the constant crises besetting medical schools desensitize them to anything but their own pain.
Moreover, children who, as a result of their risky or impulsive behavior, place themselves in threatening or dangerous situations might gradually become further desensitized to stress, because of habituation.
