We would like to think that we are really the captains of our own cruising souls, steering our every moment from our ship’s bridge. But whom are we kidding? From our breakfast and driving routines, to work habits, to night drills and even weekend patterns, we thrive on set ways of going about our lives. This is because it is impossible to be conscious and deliberate of each and every action we make. Our brains cannot devote that much energy learning how to do every single thing anew all the time. That is why it invented “habits.”
But life moves and our circumstances change and thus, we need to change along with our habits. So how do we do it? How do we form and break the habits that have served as the reliable dotted lanes of our lives? The June issue of the Scientific American featured an article on this by Ann M. Graybiel, Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Kyle S. Smith, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College.
Their article explained what they have found out about the brain circuitry that is at work when habits are formed or broken. They cited the experiment with mice who were made to run in a T-maze, the kind where the mice had to either turn right or left toward a reward, cued by audio.
The researchers found three important things about how habits are formed and imprinted in the brain.
First, habit-forming involves multiple brain circuitry connecting the neocortex, more particularly the infralimbic cortex and the striatum. The neocortex is also referred to as the “higher brain” for thinking and planning that humans and other mammals like mice have; and the striatum is the more primitive part of the brain that we share with other animals. So a habit is the product of a frenzied but programmed huddle between your oldest brain part and your “younger” one.
Second, during the initial stages of exploration on what would work, the striatum is most active, but becomes quieter when the habit is formed. When the habit is finally imprinted, the striatum was seen to be only active at the beginning and ending of the behavior as if to serve as the “bookends” of the habit. This seems to reveal that a habit is marked by a “stretch”, a “chunk”. This “chunk” is fed by “dopamine”, the reward hormone from the emotional region of your brain. It is a primitive tendency to stick to what is rewarding. This is the physiological explanation as to why you form habits: they yield rewards.
Last is that the imprinted habit does not get permanently shelved into our minds without a “supervisor”. There seems to be another circuitry that kicks in whereby the infralimbic cortex gains the hand in letting the habit kick in when it is called for. In fact, when the researchers figured out a way to shut a neuron in the area involved in the “habit” circuitry, the mice seemed to have suppressed the habit. This gave us a window to see how we could break habits, especially those that are on the extreme end such as addictions, compulsions and obsessions.
“Habits” are never described as exciting as by definition, they have gone past their novelty to become the often useful but dull petrified patterns of our lives. So “exciting habits” is as self-contradictory as “death benefits.” But the work being done by Graybiel and Smith, as well as others, makes us break the habit of looking at habits the same old way. The next time you catch yourself under the spell of an unpleasant habit, remember that it is quite a piece of work how it got to be so but you don’t really need not surrender to it, forever. – Rappler.com
Maria Isabel Garcia is a science writer. She has written two books,Science Solitaire and Twenty One Grams of Spirit and Seven Ounces of Desire. Her column appears every Friday and you can reach her at sciencesolitaire@gmail.com.
There are no comments yet. Add your comment to start the conversation.