The Wall Street Journal reported recently on research at MIT
aimed at curing people’s bad habits. But this involved sessions with a physicist
rather than a psychologist.
After identifying cells important to habit formation,
scientists were able to make them light-sensitive, and then “turn off
compulsive behaviors, break habits they had previously inculcated and prevent
habits from forming in the first place,” according to a report published in the
Wall Street Journal, “Bad Habits Bent With
Light” (subscription required).
We’ve reported on it before, particularly in the fascinating
work of Ed Boyden at MIT (see SPIE
Newsroom video interview with Boyden). In addition, Fraunhofer’s Ernst Bamberg gave a Hot Topics presentation
on the topic at SPIE Photonics West 2013. But nothing makes technology like
this accessible to the general public as well as relating it to something
personal. Want to quit smoking? There’s a laser app for that! (Or there may be
soon.)
As authors Kyle Smith and Ann Graybiel state in their paper
(Neuron, 27 June 2013), “Habits are notoriously difficult to break and, if
broken, are usually replaced by new routines.” But the introduction of “selective
optogenetic disruption of infralimbic activity” as habits are developing (which
in lab rats is known as “overtraining”) resulted in prevention of those habitual
behaviors.
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