Page 227 - Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

the goose will pull any nearby round object: James L. Gould, Etholog y : e Mechanisms
and Evolution of B ehavior (New York: Norton, 1982), 36–41.
the modern food industr y relies on stretching: Steven Witherly, Why Humans Like Junk
Food (New York: IUniverse, 2007).
Nearly e ver y food in a bag: “ Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings,” 60 Minutes,
November 27, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Wh3uq1yTc.
French fries . . . are a potent combination: Steven Witherly, Why Humans Like Junk Food
(New York: IUniverse, 2007).
such strategies enable food scientists to nd the “bliss point”: Michael Moss, Salt, Sugar,
Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (London: Allen, 2014).
“We’ve gotten too good at pushing our own buttons”: is quote originally appeared in
Stephan Guyenet, “Why Are Some People ‘Carboholics’? ” July 26, 2017,
http://www.stephanguyenet.com/why-are-some-people-carboholics. e adapted
version is given with permission granted in an email exchange with the author in
April 2018.
e importance of dopamine: “ e importance of dopamine was discovered by accident.
In 1954, James Olds and Peter Milner, two neuroscientists at McGill University,
decided to implant an electrode deep into the center of a rat’s brain. e precise
placement of the electrode was largely happenstance; at the time, the geography of
the mind remained a myster y. But Olds and Milner got lucky. ey inserted the
needle right next to the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a part of the brain that
generates pleasurable feelings. Whenever you eat a piece of chocolate cake, or listen
to a favorite pop song, or watch your favorite team win the World Series, it is your
NAcc that helps you feel so happy. But Olds and Milner quickly discovered that too
much pleasure can be fatal. ey placed the electrodes in several rodents’ brains and
then ran a small current into each wire, making the NAccs continually excited. e
scientists noticed that the rodents lost interest in ever ything. ey stopped eating
and drinking. All courtship behavior ceased. e rats would just huddle in the
corners of their cages, trans xed by their bliss. Within days, all of the animals had
perished. ey died of thirst. For more, see Jonah Lehrer, How We D ecide (B oston:
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).
neurological processes behind craving and desire: James Olds and Peter Milner, “Positive
Reinforcement Produced by Electrical Stimulation of Septal Area and Other Regions
of R at Brain,” Journal of C omparative and Physiological Psycholog y 47, no. 6 (1954),
doi:10.1037/h0058775.
rats lost all will to live: Qun-Yong Zhou and Richard D. Palmiter, “Dopamine-De cient
Mice Are Severely Hypoactive, Adipsic, and Aphagic,” Cell 83, no. 7 (1995),
doi:10.1016/0092–8674(95)90145–0.
without desire, action stopped: Kent C. B erridge, Isabel L. Venier, and Terr y E. Robinson,
“ Taste Reactivity Analysis of 6-Hydroxydopamine-Induced Aphagia: Implications
for Arousal and Anhedonia Hypotheses of Dopamine Function,” Behavioral
Neuroscience 103, no. 1 (1989), doi:10.1037//0735–7044.103.1.36.