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M.I.T. Explains Why Bad Habits Are Hard to Break
Ant writes "CNET News.com says habitual activity (e.g., smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling, etc.) 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 M.I.T., putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot... The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning."
Fascinating findings. I find that gathering information is a bad habit of mine. My dad once described himself as an encyclopedia of useless information. As they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. He drives a crosscountry rig now (no longer a computer field service technician repairing motherboards as he did in the early 80's and earning far more money) so he's avoided the terrible lure of the internet (except on weekends). I find myself abusing RSS technology to feed this habit of mine. I can't believe how much more info I cram into my brain because of RSS...
Of course, for many these scientific findings produce a "duh" response. Often science is filled with elaborate studies that simply prove what we already commonly believed or "knew". But no harm done. I think it's exciting to understand the process more fully. I wrote a blog about another study that was done on addictive behavior (ADD: Addicted to Information) - specifically drugs - last March. That research worked on showing how this effect of losing willpower to addictive behavior occurs physically/neurologically in the brain. Fascinating stuff. I related it to my addiction for information - an insight of my wife's, btw. I'm not nearly as insightful or clever.
What I'd like to see, however, is more work being done on how to unlearn habits. How to retrain the mind to not need whatever fix ails it. For instance, I'd like to reclaim an hour of my day without feeling compelled to read more and more news as is the problem this week, or watching too much TV as was the problem last month. My ADDled mind shakes off one habit only to pick up another. I try to build barriers, but as an earlier poster pointed out by example of Brian Eno, we simply bypass the artificial detours we construct. It would be better to retrain ourselves and eliminate those neural pathways that fire up upon familiar stimulus.
The Splintered Mind - Overcoming
From TFA:
Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but since addiction and procedural learning reside in the same area of the brain, dealing with cravings by performing a different procedure ( i.e. doing something else until the craving passes ) might help.
Adding to that, a reward stimulus might help as well... do you like anything healthy?
A Human Right
addiction science is pretty interesting. what gets me is that it's pretty common for an ex-opiate addict to start "jonesing" (go through the opiate withdrawal symptoms- cold/flu like symptoms, a lot of pain and have a desire for opiate to fix that) when he gets out of prison or starts to hang around with his old crew. heroin generally can be dropped, physically, in 3 days- or rather, the worst part of the withdrawal can be done in that time. other opiates are longer, but generally you're clean after two years of not using, time spent in jail or in treatment, etc. pretty interesting stuff.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
In a way, it might be better that the neuroscientists are ignorant about a lot of the psychological case studies. If they can independently come to a lot of the same conclusions as the psychological studies, then that will help reinforce the validity of both. If there's a conflict, then it will be a useful direction for future study.