MIT explains why bad habits are hard to break

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JWL
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MIT explains why bad habits are hard to break

Post by JWL » Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:30 pm

This article is very interesting, and it gets to the core of why No-S is so powerful:
Old habits don't die. They hibernate.

Habitual activity--smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling--changes neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain when habits are formed. These neural patterns created by habit can be changed or altered. But when a stimulus from the old days returns, the dormant pattern can reassert itself, according to a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot.

"It is as though, somehow, the brain retains a memory of the habit context, and this pattern can be triggered if the right habit cues come back," Ann Graybiel, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Neuroscience in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, said in a prepared statement. "This situation is familiar to anyone who is trying to lose weight or to control a well-engrained habit. Just the sight of a piece of chocolate can reset all those good intentions," Graybiel said.

The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning. In Graybiel's experiments, rats learned via specific cues that there was chocolate at one end of a T-shaped maze. While the rats were still learning, their basal ganglia neurons chattered throughout the maze run. That's because in the early stages, the brain seeks out and soaks in information that could prove important.

As the rats learned to focus in on guiding cues (in the experiment, an audible tone that guided them toward the chocolate), the behavior of the neurons changed. They fired intensely at the beginning and the end, but remained relatively quiet while the rats scurried through the maze.

Subsequently, the reward was removed. While the audible cue became meaningless, everything in the maze from beginning to end became relevant again. The neurons fired throughout the run. But when the reward reappeared, the pattern of beginning and ending spikes separated by downtime reappeared.

Sound familiar?

Graybiel speculated that the beginning and ending spike patterns reflect the nature of a routine behavior. Once initiated, individuals essentially know what to do next. Excitement returns when the reward appears. While the neural patterns can be created through voluntary activity, this sort of pattern also appears in certain disorders. Parkinson's patients, for instance, have difficulty starting to walk, and obsessive-compulsive people have trouble stopping incessant behavior.

Ideally, the research will help scientists come up with new techniques for more firmly changing habitual or addictive behavior.

A more full report will be published in the Oct. 20 issue of Nature. The National Institute of Health and the Office of Naval Research supported the research.
JWL[.|@]Freakwitch[.]net

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Fri Oct 21, 2005 2:51 am

Thank you, Freakwitch, this is great stuff. "Hibernate" -- so ominous!

A couple of things occur to me:

1) reward is critical. Not just to rewire habits, but to sustain them.

2) rules are helpful even when you're not bumping up against them all the time anymore. I've been doing this for over 3 years now, and it's rarely a struggle. But if I relied exclusively on my unconscious habits, I'm sure they'd start to veer back to the bad old ways. If we had social (i.e., strong tradition of familial mealtime eating) or environmental structures (i.e., scarcity) as supports, we could do without rules, but we don't.

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Jammin' Jan
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Post by Jammin' Jan » Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:53 am

Boy oh boy, have they nailed it! I am living proof that what they are saying about bad habits hibernating is correct. You'd think that after five years of pretty happy McDougalling (no fat, no animal products), I would be pretty well disciplined and not tempted to go back to my fatty ways, but not so! Now that the McDougall restraints have been removed, and I'm enjoying the relative freedom of No-S, I have to be really on my guard as to what I eat. I just naturally gravitate toward dietary fat, it seems. :( No-S is a whole new habit to acquire, one that, in the long run, is a much better habit than the "focussed gluttony" of McDougall or Atkins or whatever else is out there, but sometimes, even after 6 months, it is still a challenge to keep those plates under control! Thanks for posting this article.

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Post by Galemarie » Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:59 pm

Great article! And very true. New habits need to be constantly (and consistently reinforced). I quit smoking for two years (happily), had one cigarette with a friend, and was right back where I started in about a week. Talk about hibernation!!!

Thanks for posting that.

Galemarie

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Azathoth
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Post by Azathoth » Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:06 pm

While I'm not sure any of us really needed a team of researchers at MIT to tell us that habits are hard to break (if they were easy to break I'm sure we'd call them something else), but thanks for posting this article Freakwitch as it does a good job of hammering that point home.

I like the way Reinhard read the article... not so much as a warning that habits are hard to break but more that since habits are hard to break, creating good habits correctly over a period of time will be extremely beneficial for you in the sense that once established, these good habits will be very hard to break. This is really at the heart of NoS and is why I love it so much. As others have stated so many other places in this forum, it is extremely refreshing to be building good lifestyle habits through proper channels (lack of overall complication strengthened by a planned reward based system) rather than simply trying to speed diet down a few pounds without developing anything habitually.

This article serves as a good warning to watch out for older habits that may be lurking deep within our brains and it serves an equally positive message that if we do manage to create good habits then these will be just as hard to break as bad habits would have been. It also serves as a very important message to parents: You should absolutely try your best to help your children develop good habits early so that it will be these lurking good habits they always fall back to (although I'm sure once again this is something parents probably already know without needing to be told by a group of MIT researchers or one rambiling poster on the NoS forums, but what the hell, I'll say it anyway).

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