The Neurological Reason Why It’s Hard to Quit or Acquire a Habit
Habits and addictions are neuron pathways in our brains that fire not one by one but in bunches
Habits and addictions are neuron pathways in our brains.
Any action is a pathway in our brains.
We call some of them “habits”; the others “addictions.”
When we think or do something, what is firing in our brain is not a single neuron but a bunch of them firing altogether.
Since there is an average of 100 billion neurons in the human brain, you can imagine the number of synaptic connections those neurons are capable of.
According to a commonly quoted number, we have 100 TRILLION synapses (1 trillion = 1,000 billion in the American system) in our brains.
The first neurons that fire is at the outer layer of our cortex, those reserved to perceive the inputs from our sense organs.
No single firing captures the totality of the sensory experience.
Imagine looking at the world from the narrow opening of a drinking straw.
All you can see is just one sliver, one small detail of the whole picture.
How Does the Concept of “A Bird” Develop?
If you are looking at a bird singing on the maple tree, one neuron will detect the beak of the bird.
Another its feathers.
Another is the color of the feather.
Other neurons may fire capturing the weather temperature, the rustle of the leaves, the unique pattern of the chirping, etc.
All of them together are registered as the experience of “birds singing on a tree.”
All that sensory input is consolidated at the higher levels of the cortex into the concept of “a bird,” one of the millions of similar perception templates (concepts) that are created by our one trillion neurons (a thousand billion, or 10-to-the-power-of-12), connected to one another by ten quadrillion synapses (10-to-the-power-of-16).
That’s how the brain “learns” what a bird is, what it should look sound feel like, and develops expectations of a bird.
The next time we just hear a bird song, even if we cannot see the bird yet, we “know” there is a bird nearby.
At this point, the brain has learned that the parts of a bird belong to a bird: a very crucial ability that computers cannot yet accomplish successfully.
If for example, we see a cloud of swallows swirling in the sky, we can easily understand that it’s “a bird” that’s flying up there, regardless of the constantly changing shape of the bird cloud.
A computer, on the other hand, freezes up and struggles with the alternative interpretation of “a cloud.” (For an excellent discussion of this interesting point see The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future by Vivek Ranadive and Kevin Maney.)
The Richest Library on Earth
Our brain is the richest library on earth that can store a petabyte of information (2-to-the-power-of-50 bytes, or 1 million gigabytes, corresponding to 2-to-the-power-of-53 ones and zeros (bits)).
If we assume that each neuron fires either a One or a Zero, a Yes or No, this means our brains can make 2-to-the-power-of-54 binary choices at any given time.
These choices, firing in bunches, are not static either.
The synapses and neural connections that are used get stronger when the myelin protein sheath that covers them gets thicker.
Those connections start to fire at a much higher speed, like the race cars flying on a wide highway.
And those connections that are not used get weaker and weaker until they wither away.
A habit or an addiction is a well-established collection of such neurons firing and synapses transmitting at high speed.
To acquire them, we need to add new neurons into the collection until they present a pattern acceptable to us.
To quit such habits, we need to break not just a single synapse connection, but all the connections that fire en masse.
The Brain as a Non-von Neumann Processor
Today most computers are still built according to the von Neuman architecture of processing, named after the American-Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann.
There is a database (memory unit).
The program is kept separate from the database.
And there is a CPU (Central Processing Unit).
The program calls the data and calculates what it needs to calculate in the processor, by processing one line of code at a time.
That’s what the von Neumann architecture is, in its simplest formulation.
Computers are serial processors.
Each command is executed one by one, sequentially.
The computer does not start to execute one line of code before the previous one is executed.
A brain, on the other hand, is a parallel processor.
It’s radically different from the way a computer built with von Neumann architecture operates.
We recognize a bird “at once,” with several of its features recognized simultaneously.
We do not wait for the wings, the beak, the eyes, the sound, the feet, etc. of a bird to be processed one by one before observing “a bird.”
(For a more advanced cutting-edge discussion of post-von-Neuman structures see memristors, neuromorphic chips, and Neugrid chips.)
The Example of Smoking
Take smoking for example.
The first reaction of anyone smoking is coughing, and a strong urge not to do it.
The senses react strongly to the assault on the lungs.
That’s what some neurons detect.
But we also feel woozy and light-headed, some neurons detect that too and we like it.
Perhaps we need to feel light-headed at that point in order not to think of another problem, like bankruptcy or the death of a loved one.
So now the earlier negative feeling of throwing up has a synaptic connection to light-headedness. The first two elements of the template get connected.
If we continue to smoke we might start thinking that the cigarette is “a friend” of sorts, a reliable friend we can turn to.
We start to like the way it balances in between our fingers.
As a person who always had difficulty figuring out what to do with one’s hands, we like this new solution attributable to smoking.
The habit template gets another piece in place.
Then we read somewhere that nicotine may actually help to fight Alzheimer's.
We record that too on the plus side, strengthening the synaptic bonds even further.
By the time we become pack-a-day smokers, we have so many reasons to smoke that it gets harder and harder to “break” the habit. The verb “break” of course is the way the English language signals the biochemical synaptic basis of addiction.
Pretty soon everything and every occasion fire our neurons as an excellent reason to light up another one.
If we eat an excellent dinner, it’s time to light up one.
If we receive an acceptance letter from Harvard, that’s great, we light up one.
When our mother passes away, the first thing we do is light another cigarette.
Even the image of a cigarette lighter sitting on a shelf, or the sigh of a puff of smoke in the distance (which might be due to a house fire) is enough to fire the neurons and activate the cigarette smoking pattern.
One-by-One or Cold-Turkey
To break a habit you need to break not only one single template component but all of them, either one by one or at one single attempt which we call “going cold turkey.”
You cannot acquire a habit “cold turkey” style either.
It always takes a long time (10,000 hours according to Malcolm Gladwell) and repeated practice to learn how to play the violin, learn a new language, or acquire a pack-a-day smoking habit.
You can, however, quit cold turkey no matter how hard it is.
Yet in both cases, the underlying physiological pattern is the same.
Habits are the behavioral manifestation of neurons firing in bunches and thick synapses delivering the chemical messages fast.
The Biggest Mistake
The biggest mistake people who try to quit an undesirable habit make is to assume that it’s just this “one thing” that they need to quit doing.
Wrong.
It’s a rich neural fabric of interwoven memories, emotions, and motor behavior that we need to sever and disconnect one by one.
That’s why it is a tough uphill battle since we always underestimate the depth of the roots of the tree.
No matter how many times you cut off the visible part of a tree, new scions keep shooting from the stump.
It’s perhaps no coincidence that if you put the image of a tree root system next to an image of the neural connections in our brains, they look similar.
Recommendation
My recommendation for those who’d like to change a habit would be to sit down first and write down all the different circumstances and ways in which they act out the habit.
And once realizing the depth of the problem, start to think of the ways to sever each link and leave behind each mini-act that compounds into the habit.
The complexity of our brains, operating at an amazingly efficient energy level of about 20 watts (a small lightbulb) is the reason why we could create our amazing technology and civilization.
But it’s also the reason why it develops neural patterns with the same ease, patterns that fire whether we want them to or not and come back sometimes to haunt us for a lifetime.
We Have More Binary Decision Options than the Number of Stars in the Milky Way
When our brains are capable of making 2-to-the-power-of-54 choices, there is plenty of room for good and bad choices and plenty of synapses to form and break at any given time.
Let’s meditate on that while recalling that there are only 2-to-the-power-of-39 estimated stars in our Milky Way galaxy!
Good luck.