According to new research from Johns Hopkins University, the memory of something much sweeter always lingers in the brain and this is why it is always difficult to break bad habits.
“We don’t realize our past experience biases our attention to certain things,” Professor Susan M. Courtney at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences said.
The dopamine in our brains keeps the memory very real. To get our juices flowing, all we need is a reminder of that past reward.
Even without the promise of new, similar experiences, the image in the mind is enough to render self-control useless.
This is why addiction cycles are notoriously hard to break. And the more you deprive yourself of something, the more likely your nervous system is to fire off memories whenever an irritant manifests itself.
Courtney added that “I could choose healthy food or unhealthy food, but my attention keeps being drawn to fettuccini Alfredo, what we tend to look at, think about and pay attention to is whatever we’ve done in the past that was rewarded.
“There’s something about past reward association that’s still causing a dopamine release. That stimulus has become incorporated into the reward system.”
The study authors observed 20 participants who were asked to play a little computer game and their brain was scanned during the process.