Hard to Break: Why Our Brains Makes Habits Stick

(Paperback)

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The neuroscience of why bad habits are so hard to breakand how evidence-based strategies can help us change our behaviour more effectively.

We all have habits wed like to break, but for many of us it can be nearly impossible to do so. There is a good reason for this: the brain is a habit-building machine. InHard to Break, leading neuroscientist Russell Poldrack provides an engaging and authoritative account of the science of how habits are built in the brain, why they are so hard to break, and how evidence-based strategies may help us change unwanted behaviours.

Hard to Breakoffers a clear-eyed tour of what neuroscience tells us about habit change and debunks easy fixes that arent backed by science. It explains how dopamine is essential for building habits and how the battle between habits and intentional goal-directed behaviours reflects a competition between different brain systems. Along the way, we learn how cues trigger habits; why we should make rules, not decisions; how the stimuli of the modern world hijack the brains habit machinery and lead to drug abuse and other addictions; and how neuroscience may one day enable us to hack our habits. Shifting from the individual to society, the book also discusses the massive habit changes that will be needed to address the biggest challenges of our time.

Moving beyond the hype to offer a deeper understanding of the biology of habits in the brain,Hard to Breakreveals how we might be able to make the changes we desire and why we should have greater empathy with ourselves and others who struggle to do so.

Author Bio

Russell A. Poldrack is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. He is the author of The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts (Princeton). Twitter @russpoldrack