{"id":214044,"date":"2025-05-14T18:22:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/neuroscientists-reveal-insights-into-how-the-brain-forms-habits-and-why-they-are-so-hard-to-break"},"modified":"2025-05-14T18:22:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T23:22:51","slug":"neuroscientists-reveal-insights-into-how-the-brain-forms-habits-and-why-they-are-so-hard-to-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/neuroscientists-reveal-insights-into-how-the-brain-forms-habits-and-why-they-are-so-hard-to-break","title":{"rendered":"Neuroscientists reveal insights into how the brain forms habits and why they are so hard to break"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/neuroscientists-reveal-insights-into-how-the-brain-forms-habits-and-why-they-are-so-hard-to-break2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Center (SWC) at UCL have discovered that the brain uses a dual system for learning through trial and error. This is the first time a second learning system has been identified, which could help explain how habits are formed and provide a scientific basis for new strategies to address conditions related to habitual learning, such as addictions and compulsions.<\/p>\n<p>Published in <i>Nature<\/i>, the study in mice could also have implications for developing therapeutics for Parkinson\u2019s. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09008-9\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> is titled \u201cDopaminergic action prediction errors serve as a value-free teaching signal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEssentially, we have found a mechanism that we think is responsible for habits. Once you have developed a preference for a certain action, then you can bypass your value-based system and just rely on your default policy of what you\u2019ve done in the past. This might then allow you to free up cognitive resources to make value-based decisions about something else,\u201d explained Dr. Marcus Stephenson-Jones, Group Leader at SWC and lead author of the study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Center (SWC) at UCL have discovered that the brain uses a dual system for learning through trial and error. This is the first time a second learning system has been identified, which could help explain how habits are formed and provide a scientific basis for new strategies to address conditions [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,47,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-neuroscience","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}