BRAIN TALK
People with Moebius are always interested in new brain research.  So...are you finding it difficult to keep those healthy New Year's resolutions?  Is it hard to break those old habits?  Your brain has something to do with that...but there are ways to do better:

The new year's just begun, and already you're finding it hard to keep those resolutions to junk the junk food, get off the couch or kick smoking. There's a biological reason a lot of our bad habits are so hard to break -- they get wired into our brains.

That's not an excuse to give up. Understanding how unhealthy behaviors become ingrained has scientists learning some tricks that may help good habits replace the bad.  "Why are bad habits stronger? You're fighting against the power of an immediate reward," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an authority on the brain's pleasure pathway.

It's the fudge vs. broccoli choice: Chocolate's yum factor tends to beat out the knowledge that sticking with veggies can bring an eventual reward of lost pounds.  Just how that bit of happiness turns into a habit involves dopamine, a pleasure-sensing chemical. It conditions the brain to want that reward again and again, especially when it gets the right cue from your environment.  Always snack in front of your favorite TV show? The striatum, a dopamine-rich part of the brain, memorizes rituals and routines that are linked to getting a particular reward, Volkow said. Eventually, those environmental cues trigger the striatum to make some behaviors almost automatic.

Researchers suggest steps that may help counter your brain's hold on bad habits:  Repeat the new behavior -- the same routine at the same time of day. Resolved to exercise? Doing it at the same time of the morning, rather than fitting it in haphazardly, makes the striatum recognize the habit, so eventually, "if you don't do it, you feel awful," Volkow said."

"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It
is that we should have a new soul." -G.K. Chesterton