Saturday, November 19th, 2005, 5:48 pm
The Bad Habits Trap
An academic study suggests that long-standing habits are difficult to break for a reason. It attributes this chronic and dangerous entity to physiology. This might, at least in part, explain why so many of us struggle to change recurring activities or rid ourselves from addictions.
Old habits don’t die. They hibernate.
Habitual activity–smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling–changes neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain when habits are formed.