What is the term for the reduction in receiver sensitivity caused by a strong signal near the received frequency?

Desensitization, commonly referred to as 'desense', happens when a receiver is exposed to an exceptionally strong off-frequency signal. Even though the strong signal is not on the frequency you are trying to listen to, its immense power overwhelms the receiver's front-end amplifiers or mixer stages. When these stages saturate or overload, they can no longer properly amplify weak signals. The receiver's Automatic Gain Control (AGC) might also be falsely triggered by the strong adjacent signal, turning down the overall receiver gain. As a result, the desired weak signal suddenly disappears or becomes unreadable. It is important to distinguish desensitization from other types of interference. 'Cross modulation' involves the actual transfer of audio from one signal to another, and 'reciprocal mixing' introduces phase noise. Desensitization is purely a severe reduction in receiver sensitivity.