Grooving Your Brain
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Bad Habits are hard to break, and most of us know that. But MIT thinks they know why. There is some evidence that your brain builds up some pathways and activities to form habits. But even when you change the habit, the old pathways are still there and can reassert themselves. Kind of like a groove in a record (anyone remember records?). There's some base pathway in your brain and your behavior tips back into the groove no matter if you've broken the habit.
Sound familiar? Ever tried to quit smoking, drinking, give up cheese like Wallace, or some other craving or habit you have? It's hard and perhaps it's not as simple as getting past the first few weeks. It may be a lifetime of struggle if your grooves are too deep.
I'm always skeptical of reading too much into studies and reports like this. The science is way more complicated than is summarized by the reporter and in fact, the reality of how many things work is way beyond the science. It's a model that might explain some things, but probably will be shown to be less than perfect over time.
Still it's interesting to think that those habits you learn early on may be with you forever. It does make an interesting argument for trying very hard to prevent your kids from developing any of those bad habits that they might never be able to break.
Steve Jones
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Instead of the below, I think that rats are afraid of mazes and will do whatever their masters in the white lab coats tell them to do, so that they can get out of them.
"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"
http://news.com.com/MIT+explains+why+bad+habits+are+hard+to+break/2100-11395_3-5902850.html
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I agree! I think that is also what makes Cows Angry and Birds get upset stomachs! [And my original degree was in science, so I can (pretend) I know what I am talking about with all sorts of fancy words like a priori, and Randomised Controlled Trial]
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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Oddly, your randomised controlled trial does not work but the grooves in my brain told me I had no cookie. Further my palovian dog athropomophic glands kept on having me clicking the link till the 'mouse' and not the rat broke.
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Odd, that was a simple Google search, so there should be no cookie's required; worked for me... (Any way, my ability to post URL's with a mask is sushila's fault and now I am out of control - probably her fault too...)
What do you do with pavlovian rats?
Keep getting bitten in the behind? I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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Srry was my dennis miller style of humour coming through ............a little too esoteric sometimes for my audience...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Pavlov
pavlov ..pavlovian
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I knew what it was; that is why I corrected your spelling... It is too cold up there for you'se guys - ain't it?
I did expect a good comeback for you vast audience, though...
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
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i have no comeback... I'm too busying ringing the bell. I never seem to get the food pellet.
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I got my food pellet.
Steve,
Why would we listen to anything that MIT suggests... they run oracle and filemaker pro
http://itinfo.mit.edu/product?platform=Windows
and teach postgreSql in their math departments.
and by the looks of things everyone is basically running Linux boxes... with Sun's for the Mathematica... ( <----I dont mind that software but its math functions head toward the unprovable or the proofs are more than 10 pages and that's beyond my attention span most of the time)
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Keep thy enemy closer
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