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."

Comments

Kicking the Slashdot Habit

[lowy]

So removing the Slashdot button from my bookmark bar might not be sufficient?

Re:Kicking the Slashdot Habit

[Hogwash McFly]

I have a sex addiction.

I can start anytime I want, I swear!

Sin is in!

[dada21]

A day is lacking without the 7 S's:

1. Shower
2. Seminate (Sex or self)
3. Smoke
4. Shave
5. Starbucks
6. Shit
7. Slashdot

Note that the primes are all habits. Now permanently locked in my brain.

Re:Sin is in!

[Shadow Wrought]

Note that the primes are all habits. Now permanently locked in my brain.

Er, so #6 isn't a habit for you? Maybe you should get some more fiber in the diet;-)

What we already knew

[ReverendLoki]

Hell, any former smoker could tell you this much. I smoked for less than a decade, and I quit over 5 years ago, no relapses. However, sometimes an almost reflex gets triggered by the smell of tobacco, or just seeing a cigarrette, and it's like my arm itches to go through the motions, what I've seen described as a "ritual" of sorts, of lighting a smoke. This all occurs in my mind a split second before the conscious mind kicks in and realizes what is occurring, and takes control again.

Trust me, this is a very accurate description of how some of these habits ingrain themselves into your mind.

Re:What we already knew

[dankasfuk]

Part of that response it thought to involve the nucleus accumbens, thought to play an important part in the reward pathway. It's also closely tied to the basal ganglia and the amygdala (part of the 'emotional' brain).

Re:What we already knew

[ReverendLoki]

Here's what helped me quit - after finishing my last pack of "real" cigarettes (funny how that last pack lasts longer than any other pack you've owned), I went to the tobacconist's and bought a pack of what sounded like the nastiest herbal cigaretes I could find. I think the brand name was "Magic" or something sad like that. Hell, the first two ingredients were marshmallow and "cherry flavoring", with absolutely no tobacco whatsoever. Then, for the next week, whenever that urge got to be so strong that I couldn't resist it anymore, I stepped outside (even if I was somewhere that allowed smoking, 'cause I couldn't force this stench on anyone) and forced myself to smoke an entire one of these. Nastiest crap ever - it tasted like I was smoking over-sweetened Kool-Aid. In fact, I think mixing Kool-Aid powder and dried lettuce leaves might be a good equivalent for hand-rolled.

I used this to help me get through that first week, when the bodies getting over the worst of the nicotine withdrawal. It satisfied my habit of the ritual of smoking, but did nothing to satisfy the addiction, which not only helped divorce the ritual from the effects of the nicotine in my mind, but it also provided some damn effective negative reinforcement to boot.

I never did finish that pack...

WooHoo!!!

[lucabrasi999]

smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling, etc.

Drinking isn't on that list. I guess I don't have any bad habits!

also known as the "Civilisation" syndrome

[Ubergrendle]

Civilisation comes out, people obsessively play till 5am regularly so they can 'build this last final World Wonder'. This syndrome continues until the 5 1/4" disks wear out, the mouse cable is frayed, and the EGA monitor has CRT burn in.

People recover, move on with their lives...then the syndrome re-occurs when Civilization II comes out -- on CDROM!!! Most people feel grunge music was a cultural phenomonen driven by the recession, but oh no -- college kids obsessed with Civ quit their summer jobs and could only afford second hand flannel, sinking 10 hrs a day into a 486 game.

Advance a few years... Civilisation III late 2000. Dot-com crash late 2000. In this case correlation DOES mean causation.

And now... Civilisation IV. Fortunately due to MIT's intense investigations into this phenomenon, hopefully a cure is available for addiction. The economy can't take another Enron/Worldcom/Pets.com.

Re:I can stop anytime...

[jonthegm]

See, this is why I like a little variety in my addictions: alcohol for a couple weeks, smoking the next, Starcraft after that, keeps me from getting pinned down to a single addiction for very long.

Dude, I think that's ADHD.

Nothing new, just not commonly known

[FredThompson]

This came out of alzheimer's research about 15 years ago.

Your brain optimizes to think what it thinks about a lot. (Why Slashdot readers don't morph into female genitalia or came controllers shows that human thought can't change matter.)

When you try to "break" an old habit, it's easy at first. After a few days, the brain realizes the optimizations are starting to disappear and it works to reinforce those structures.

The good side of this is that you don't have to re-learn how to use the toilet, eat, talk, etc. The bad side is you can't choose which thoughts are reinforced other than brute force to get past the recovery period. Even so, it's easy to go back to old optimizations. Think of it as being similar to a fold in a piece of paper. The fold can't ever be removed, just made less prominent. The paper will still have the tendency to fold at that position.

Bad habits -- The domino effect

[halleluja]

More importantly, other people's old habits incite forgotten habits.

I recently started vomitting again on a regular basis after seeing actual COBOL and FORTRAN code.

...but...

[Stanistani]

This still doesn't explain that 'dirty feeling' I get when I post here.

Now I have to go shower.

Scientology engrams?

[bobalu]

I hate to bring it up for fear of Xenu's revenge, but as I understand it this is the basis for Scientology's "auditing". The idea is to break up those old neural paths so they don't re-assert themselves inappropriately - like telling your boss to f*ck off because he reminds you of your father, for instance.

I always thought this made some sense, although the rest of their, umm, presentation was pretty scary.

Neural imprinting can be a real bitch some time

[multiplexo]

Sure, it's nice not to have to relearn how to wipe your ass every day but on the other hand I've met amputees who had serious damage to their legs and after years of surgery they finally elected to have an amputation so that they could have a fully functional prosthesis rather than a non-functional and painful leg. But the bitch of it is that the chronic pain they suffered rewired their brains to feel chronic pain and a lot of them still have quite a bit of pain after their amputations, even though the affected limb is gone.

Vista is great!

[CDPatten]

This probably explains why you were about to flame me when you saw the title. Its just habbit, anything pro-ms, FLAME!

Addicted to Information

[Absentminded-Artist]

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.

Re:Finally,

[Hogwash McFly]

I kept kicking Peregrin Took out of my house every 5 minutes, but couldn't get rid of this bad hobbit in any way.

Re:mystery solved, I hope this isn't hopeless

[yali]

On a behavioral level, this finding is nothing new. Hermann Ebbinghaus introduced the idea of savings in relearning in the 19th century. This finding has been replicated countless different ways, including being replicated in neural network simulations.

Nor is it news that this involves neurons. Hint to cnet: all of mental life involves neurons.

What's scientifically interesting is which neurons are involved. The researchers are trying to map out the circuits involved in order to better understand the underlying process. That is at least potentially interesting.

My followup question is, is it possible to break these patterns, ever? Or are we destined for eternity to be creatures of our own habits? Should we stop buying self-help books?

One way to break an association is to develop a competing association. If Stimulus A triggers Response B, then you develop a new association between Stimulus A with Response C. That makes it harder to fall victim to the savings-in-relearning effect when you're faced with Stimulus A in the future, because you won't just be left hanging to try to suppress your impulse to respond with B.

And yes, you should stop buying self-help books.

Peter Cetera said it best

[MarkGriz]

I'm addicted to you babe,
You're a stimulus-induced reassertion of a dormant neural pattern on my basal ganglia

Best quote from TFA . . .

[Rob the Bold]

"It is as though, somehow, the brain retains a memory . . ."

Definitely worth looking into . . .