Monthly Archives: April 2013

On Habits, Good Ones and Bad

At work I routinely saw patients who suffered from substance addiction.  Addiction is a powerful motivator – it is heart-breaking to see patients forgo buying life-sustaining food, water, and medications to “save up” for the next cocaine fix.  Traditionally science has pinned the mechanism of addiction to biological molecules.  However, over the past few decades, scientific studies began to show that behavioral neuropsychology – the intermingling of biological molecules, behaviors, and how the brain ties everything together into an experience – is a far more complete way to think about addiction.  This intermingling of different fields also shed light on addiction as a disease of a general, even beneficial, motivation pathway. Continue reading