Analysis Of The Habit Loop By Paul Minor

Cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, alcohol, opium, tobacco, hypnotics, just to name a few. Addiction is a chronic disease that affects the chemicals in the brain. It dysfunctions the circuits in the brain that deal with memory, reward, sex, motivation, behavior, relationships and emotions all mostly resulting in substance use or other behaviors to fulfill those circuit rewards. This world is in a current addiction epidemic on drugs. Let’s try to understand addiction to make it a little clearer.

All of us have formed habits in our daily life. Even though some of these habits only exist in our subconscious and we cannot actually make sure whether they are real or only the conjectures. But it is undoubted that all of our behaviors are influenced by our desires on specific objectives. In the book, the power of habit, Charles Duhigg explained the definition of a habit as an effort-saving instinct. “When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making” (20). To support his opinions on habits, he introduced the three-step model of a habit loop, the theory of golden rule of habit, and the role of a craving brain and belief in the process of a habit changing. Through learning

Loftus argues that people can be shaped to remember their past in different ways. She used a study about getting lost in a Mall to show that individuals can be prompted to recollect the whole events that occurred to them (Loftus 74).

“The Habit Loop” written by Charles Duhigg explores habits being subconsciously emitted within the brain causing actions to happen without thinking about it or even remembering how to do it. Eugene Pauly suffered from viral encephalitis of which left a hole in his brain, leaving his memory to deteriorate over time. Eugene's memory got worse and worse until he could barely remember anything that had happened 20 seconds ago. Although his memory was disappearing, Eugene could still carry out tasks such as eat or use the restroom, but when asked to explain how he does it, he can not tell you. Habits were embedded into his brain letting him survive merely on instinct rather than memory. Eugene could leave the house and walk up and down streets

Impaired memory R/T neurologic disturbances AEB patient unable to recall recent events. She was to take part in the nursing facilities exercise program more often; this was to promote her physical and psychological well-being (Cox, 2007). Upon visiting her the second time it was clear that she had followed my suggestions. She was able to walk around her room more freely with the aid of her walker, which she did not use as much before. She was also able to recall our last meet in some detail, verbalizing recall of some recent events. The patient is consistent in her routine of care, which aided in her ability to recall events (Cox, 2007). The sense of familiarity form a consistent routine assisted the patient in being able to recall events.

According to Drugabuse.gov, Drug addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing brain disease that is characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences. Addiction is viewed as brain disease due to the changes that are going on in the brain due to the usage of the drugs, so it alters the structure and how it regularly functions. However, after reading Maia Szalavitz book, “Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary new way of understanding addiction (2016)”, she has a unique view of what brain addiction is and her experience with addiction. In her novel, she views addiction as a learning disorder, like in her case it started early on in her as a child learning to be addicted to other things that develop habits of pleasure, reaction that makes up their addiction. Her memoir is her personal experience with addiction with using reputable journals and study to convey her point on what her rollercoaster with addictions has been starting early on in early childhood.

A 30-year-old man named John has no memory capacity due to hippocampal damage from birth. He still cannot remember most of his past. His family tries to help him by going through old photos and watching home videos. John has to write everything down. Routines help keep him organized and learning is something he has to concentrate on more. He travels by train because of his bad memory. He has traveled by train hundreds of times but has to continue to write down directions. John gets on a train heading to see neuroscientist, Dr. Faraneh Vargha-Khadem of University College London. She discusses her work with him. The hippocampus is crucial to memory. Compared to a normal person’s, John’s hippocampus are half the size and are not automatically registering. Dr. Vargha-Khadem asks him to draw a picture she shows him. He does pretty good. One hour later, she asked him to draw the same design from memory. He could not do it. His ability was completely compromised, she said. John’s memory is stuck in the present and he will not be mentally able to time travel to the past or future.

Is addiction a brain disease? The definition of disease is a disorder in an organism that produces specific signs/symptoms that affects a specific location and isn’t a direct result of any kind of physical injury. Addiction is a compulsive need for any substance or service that can cause a person or organism to form a habit, and is a chronic disease of brain reward and causes dysfunctions in the circuits. Addiction is also characterized by the inability to consistently abstain impairment in behavioral control. The idea that addiction is a brain disease is just about universally accepted among scientist that focus on addiction (Corrigan,2008). However few believe that addiction is not a brain disease because they claim that neural dysfunction is not sufficient for disease. (NCBI, 2012). Some agree that addiction occurs in the brain but should not be considered a brain disease or a disease at all(Lawrence 2013). Substance abuse is the most common addiction that people base their decision upon. These drugs affect the brain and cause different reactions to the rest of the of the body. The types of drugs include: hallucinogens, opioids, sedatives, stimulants, etc. cause different

In daily life, we must be able to filter out the multitude of distractions which any physical environment can impose upon our senses. By creating a tunneled vision approach to moving about the environments which are a part of our everyday existence, we can more efficiently complete the tasks which are required of us in our various roles in society. In his essay “On Habit,” Alain de Botton, writes that people have become habituated in their own daily lives. In his first section he details himself returning from Barbados to London who discovers the weather isn’t what he expected. He expected his mood from the weather of Barbados to stay the same in London. De Botton illustrates that people in general are unhappy when it comes to observing

Great post! I will add Norman Doidge book to my reading list. In your first paragraph, you talked about how the brain rewires itself to try to adopt as much as it can. O’Connor (2014) talks about why the brain does not work when a person uses a substance, and individuals who lodged in bad habits cannot understand why they are echoing the same mistakes. That counselor and psychiatrist forget about the unconsciousness of the brain. For instance, an individual forgets to take his or her medicine falling back into unhealthy thinking, perhaps that is the unconscious at work, causing the client to suffer in silence, unable to relax, and social isolation.

Addiction is like all behaviours “the business of the brain”. Addictions are compulsive physical and psychological needs from habit-forming sustenances like nicotine, alcohol, and drugs. Being occupied with or involved in such activities, leads a person who uses them again and again to become tolerant and dependent eventually experiencing withdrawal. (Molintas, 2006).

Addiction is a mysterious illness because it seems to make such little sense to the onlooker and even to the addict. Addicts are prone to repeating their poor choices because they do not process information correctly.

Do you remember how you learned how to ride a bike, read a book, or read a book? These and many more activities you are allowed to do are all cause of procedural memory. Procedural memory are the motor skills that you have developed from repeated times. These things, such as walking, talking, eating, start when you are born. You do these motor skills and actions so much that they become more of a habit and you do not notice that you are actually do them. People do not stop and say to their selves “Remember to breath, in, then out” or “to walk, you put your right foot out first, then your left”. That would make life a little more difficult than it already is. Humans and animals can learn with feedback. For example, when we start driving, we will learn the amount of pressure we have to put on the peddle for the car not to go to fast or too slow. “Perceptual learning training with feedback is not formally different from that experienced by a rat required to choose between a triangle and circle, say, when one of these is followed by a given outcome (e.g., access to food) and one is not. Contemporary associative theories of animal discrimination learning (e.g., that proposed by Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) provide an explanation of such learning” (Mitchell & Hall, 2014). Another habit we have as humans are is superstitious learning. Superstitious learning is “actions performed even when there is no causal relationship between the action and its consequences” (Eichenbaum, 2008). For

After a new memory is learnt, it enters the process of encoding during which the memory is labile and capable of disruption until it becomes stabilised over a period of time (Nader & Einarsson, 2010; Nader et al, 2000). This process is called consolidation and originally consisted of the theory that once stabilised in the brain, it remains fixed (Suzuki et al, 2004). This theory has been rebutted by the acceptance of reconsolidation, a theory that imposes the ideology that when memories are retrieved, through similar experiences (Lee, 2009), they become labile until,

Case 1 tells the story of Henry Molaison (HM), a man with no memory. He lost his memory due to the operation of suctioned out the hippocampus to treat his epileptic seizures. At that time, it was not known yet that the hippocampus was essential for making memories. After operation, his seizures were significantly reduced, but Henry suffered a global amnesia. Owen et al. (2007) describes patients with global amnesia as perceptive and attentive but with a total loss of short-term memory and some trouble accessing memories of the recent past. Henry could not learn new things as he quickly forgot everything that he had learned. He could learn at a subconscious level only.