Anatomy of a Neuron

(From Hughes MA, Glass PSA, Jacobs JR. Context-sensitive half-time in multicompartment pharmacokinetic models for intravenous anesthetic drugs. Anesthesiology. 1992;76:334-341, with permission.)

Although the C50 of each curve is the same, the partial agonist is less potent than the full agonist because of the decreased efficacy.