That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Habits

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Many of us will enter the new year with resolutions. Usually, these resolutions involve either forming new habits or breaking old ones. In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind why we form habits, and how to shake the bad ones. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm That Neuroscience Guy. Welcome to the podcast. Happy New Year, everybody. Welcome to 2022 on That Neuroscience Guy. Well, it's the start of the new year, and a lot of us like to make resolutions. Things we vow to do to improve ourselves. What we are really talking about, though, is habit formation. We want to form some new habits. We all have habits.

The way we might fold our clothes, or the way we might make a sandwich. What we order when we're out, the route we choose to drive to work. Well, how do we make habits? How do we maintain habits? And how do we change them? On today's podcast, the neuroscience of habits. The formation of new habits is quite simple. It's tied to reward processing the brain, something that we talked about in Season 1 in a different context. So let's work through an example. Let's say we try a new route home from work.

We try this route and it saves us five minutes. Our brains process that as a reward. And if you remember, that means there's a very brief release of dopamine in the brain. And that release of dopamine cements the neural connections in the brain associated with choosing the new route, in particular in the prefrontal cortex in this case. And that's how our habit begins to form, that little bit of reward. how our habit begins to form, that little bit of reward. And that's true for other habits, even bad habits. Take smoking, for instance. Smoking a cigarette triggers a reward response, and as such, there's a brief release of dopamine and choosing to smoke a cigarette is strengthened as a choice in your brain. Again, the foundation of the habit of smoking.

Let's take another one, one that I'm particularly bad at, checking your phone constantly. Well, let's say you're expecting to get a message from someone you just met, someone you're really interested in. So you check your phone, you check your phone, and you check your phone. When you do see a message from that special someone, well, again, dopamine is released and it reinforces the habit of checking your phone. When you do see a message from that special someone, well again, dopamine is released and it reinforces the habit of checking your phone. So habit formation is based around getting a reward. There's a positive outcome to the habit that you are starting to do. And note that these rewards can be really, really small. We're not talking about bags of money or anything like that. It could just be a pleasure sensation.

All the reward has to do is make the value of choosing the habit higher than the value of doing something else. Now, what do I mean by value? If you think back to decision-making, decision-making comes down to choosing between options of different values. And value doesn't have to be a financial thing. It's just the value of a choice, how much you like something or how much that choice appeals to you. So these little rewards you get when you make choices, they change these values, they increase them. So in the case of checking your phone, when you get that message that you're looking for, well, it increases the value of checking your phone. And to be clear, something being easier might be seen as a reward. So if

your habit is just something you do because it's a shortcut and makes your life easier, well, it costs you less and that's a form of reward. Now, what about negative habits? You know, worrying can be a a habit people just keep worrying and they get stuck in this trend of worrying and worrying and worrying they habitually worry it's a habit like i've said that they're stuck in but how can this be rewarding well it's a bit of a complicated argument but i'll walk you through it worry implies at some level that you care all right so you care about the person you're worrying about or you implies at some level that you care. All right. So you care about the person you're worrying about, or you care about the situation that you're worrying about. And your brain perceives that as being more rewarding than not worrying. Think about that

for a second. You've got a significant other and say they're taking a flight somewhere. Well, if you worry about them, you can interpret that or your brain can interpret that as caring about them because you don't want their plane to crash or whatever poor outcome there might be. And if you just don't care, well, that's not rewarding because your brain perceives that as, well, I don't care about this person or I don't care about this instant. So as I've outlined already, there would be a dopamine release when you worry, funnily enough. So as I've outlined already, there would be a dopamine release when you worry, and that reinforces the habit of worrying. So guess what? You choose that habit of worrying above other options, because it's better to worry, at least in terms of what's being reinforced, than to not worry. Now, of course, that's not actually true, and hopefully you can see that, but that is how you might get stuck in a habit cycle of worrying. So now we've talked a little bit about how we

get habits, all right? So how do you acquire habits? It's the reward, but why do we keep choosing them over and over again? Well, as it turns out, we spend most of our lives in kind of a flow mode, an autopilot, if you will. And when we encounter things or choices, we just go with the default option. Now, if you listen to our podcast on decision making, decisions are simply made by choosing the highest value option. And I've sort of reviewed value already, right? That it's the intrinsic worth of something to you. I'll give you one more example, just to remind you, you know, what are you going to have for dinner tonight? Pizza or sushi? One that I always think about myself. Well, if sushi is a higher value option because

you like sushi more, that's the choice you make. Now, how do you actually make the decision? Well, it's a bit more complicated than choosing between two values. One way that it's typically framed is what we call system one versus system two. System one is your gut hunch system that just sort of goes with the flow and goes with what you think you should do. System two, though, is more analytical. It's the reflective system where you sit back and you really deliberate what's happening. Now system 1 is deeply entrenched in our midbrain. It involves structures like the striatum and the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas system 2 is heavily associated with the prefrontal cortex. Now when we're on autopilot, this is simply system 1

and we run with it. And as it turns out, we spend most of our time in system one. We only engage system two when we really need to. So you're just going for it. System one is making all your decisions and there's no need to engage system two. So if you think of the habit examples we talked about, driving home, you're on autopilot. So the habitual route that you take home is the highest value option and system one just automatically chooses it because there's no reason to really think about it. So you just make that choice and you go. Smoking a cigarette, same thing. You're sitting there, you've got time to kill and it's a high value choice and system

one just goes for it checking your phone constantly same idea you're sitting there you're watching tv you pause for a second should i keep watching tv but know the higher value choice is to check your phone and even worrying the same idea you're sitting there and you've got a bit of free time and you start worrying because system one has got you and you're running on autopilot and And this is how we spend most of our lives, literally on autopilot. And occasionally, occasionally something uncertain happens and system two in the prefrontal cortex engages. Now, the last piece of this are what are called habit cycles. Habit cycles are basically the process by which the habit can be evoked.

And a simple example is that a habit cycle is something like you're cooking so you automatically pour a glass of wine and you enjoy that. All right? Or, you know, something cues you to think about a sad event in your life and then you feel sad and away you go. Now a habit cycle has a very simple pattern. It's trigger, behavior, results. So let's start with triggers. Triggers are the cues that spark our habits. So as we've said many times on the podcast, your brain is constantly taking in sensory information, sights, sounds, smells, even the sense of touch. And something triggers it. You see something that reminds you of something, or you're doing something that reminds you of something. So in the cooking example, the trigger is cooking. All right. So you start to cook. Now there's a behavior that engages there, which is I pour

myself a glass of wine. All right. So the behavior is what happens in response to the trigger. It's what you do. And the result then is what happens when you engage the behavior. This is where the dopamine comes in, in the learning process. So what we do is as we're learning our habits, there's a trigger. Hey, I'm cooking. I pour myself a glass of wine. That's my behavior. And wow, there's a trigger. Hey, I'm cooking. I pour myself a glass of wine. That's my behavior. And wow, there's a dopamine release. So guess what? That reinforces the habit of having a glass of wine when you're cooking. So when you're operating in system one and you're just going along on autopilot, well, your brain encounters the trigger. It automatically goes to the behavior

and then there's a result. So let's go through another one of our examples. Let's take the worrying one, because that's a tricky one to go through. So I'll go with what I said earlier. The trigger might be that you have a significant other, and they're about to take a flight. Your behavior is to worry, and the result is that release of dopamine. So every time someone takes a flight, you worry because that's what's being reinforced and that becomes your habit.

Now, let's finish with the idea of changing habits. Well, the short version is you have to explore your habits. So to change a habit, probably the biggest step is to figure out what's the trigger. You're standing there in the kitchen having that glass of wine. Well, you have to figure out that, hey, it's cooking that sets off this trigger. Or a significant other is about to get on a plane and you start to worry. You've got to identify the trigger. And then you need to explore the behavior, make sure you're sure of what the behavior is, and you just have to realize that the result is that it's rewarding to you at some level. There's that release of dopamine. So how do you actually change your habit? Well, what you need to do is associate the trigger with a new behavior, which leads to a better result. So let's go with the cooking example.

So, let's go with the cooking example. You begin to cook, and that trigger goes to a new behavior. You pour yourself a cranberry and soda, all right? And there's a better result. You know, you don't have that fuzzy head in the morning the next day. So, the dopamine release begins to relearn the association. You relearn the habit. The warning example is a little bit trickier, as I've said throughout, but again, you can imagine how it works. What's the trigger? Well, this person's about to go flying. So you need to pick a new behavior, whatever it is. When someone's flying, I don't know, take yourself out for dinner. Do something that leads to a better result, more dopamine being released. Now, changing habits are really hard. So if you think back to the last podcast of 2021, or literally the previous podcast,

this is why it's so important to keep your brain in an optimal state. It's far easier to change habits when your brain is in an optimal state. It's very hard to change habits when your brain is in a suboptimal state. So to review what habits are, habits are formed basically because there's a reward associated with them. All right. So there's something that starts the habit, which was just called the trigger. You get rewarded for the behavior you engage in. There's that release of dopamine and it strengthens the habit. The reason you keep engaging in them is because, like we said, you're always on autopilot, or at least most of the time. You're constantly in this system one

mode where you're not really thinking it through. You're not engaging the prefrontal cortex. You're letting the midbrain, the striatum, and the ACC make all the choices. So they just choose the habit because it's the highest value option. And as I said at the end, you can change your habits. It's a bit of work. You've got to get your brain in an optimal state. And then basically what you need to do is associate those triggers with new behaviors, which leads to new results. That's the neuroscience of habits. So when you're thinking about those resolutions you've made, this is how you can turn them into habits. All right, that's the neuroscience of habits. Remember, follow me on Twitter, really helps, at that neuroscience guy.

You can find updates about the cool research that we're doing in my lab. You can also check out our YouTube channel, That Neuroscience Guy. Although there's not much there yet, we are going to build it in 2022. And of course, email us your ideas, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. We're only a few episodes away from wrapping up season two, and then we'll go into planning mode for season three. And we really want to hear from you about what you want to learn about. Remember, it's the neuroscience of daily life, so let us know what you find interesting, and I'll do my best to explain it to you along with Matt.

Hope you enjoyed the podcast today. My name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm that neuroscience guy. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.