习惯的神经学基础

Here's the thing to recognize about your bad habit: You cannot eradicate your bad habit. You have to trick your neurology.

关于你的坏习惯，你需要认识到一点：你无法根除它，你必须欺骗你的神经系统 (Neurology: 研究神经系统及其疾病的科学)。

We are living through this huge evolution in our understanding of habits, and it's being driven primarily by understanding the neurology of where habits come from.

我们正经历着对习惯理解的巨大演变，这主要由理解习惯的神经学 (Neurology: 研究神经系统及其疾病的科学) 来源所驱动。

成瘾的本质与社会认知误区

I thought that drugs were the source of the problems that we were seeing in our community. Turns out not only was I wrong, society was wrong.

我曾以为毒品是我们社区面临问题的根源。结果发现，不仅我错了，整个社会都错了。

Basically, we tend to develop addictions when we have a psychological need. At those moments, smartphones tend to be great vehicles for providing the hits that you need when you need them.

基本上，当人们有心理需求时，我们倾向于形成成瘾 (Addictions: 对奖励性刺激的强迫性参与，尽管会带来不良后果)。在那些时刻，智能手机往往是提供你所需“快感”的绝佳载体。

I think that there is this interior sense when a bad habit strikes that people know that they have a bad habit. It just seems like a lot of people, even the most successful people, don't necessarily know where to start at changing it.

我认为，当一个坏习惯袭来时，人们内心会有一种感觉，知道自己有坏习惯。只是很多人，甚至是最成功的人，似乎不一定知道从何开始改变它。

The ability to form habits is one of the most important and amazing evolutionary tactics that the human race has come up with and all primates and almost all animals for that matter.

形成习惯的能力是人类、所有灵长类动物乃至几乎所有动物所发展出的最重要、最令人惊叹的进化策略 (Evolutionary Tactics: 生物为了生存和繁衍而发展出的行为模式或特征) 之一。

When you form a habit, you can execute a fairly complex series of behaviors without having to think deeply about it. And what that means is that it lets us think about other things.

当你形成一个习惯时，你可以执行一系列相当复杂的行为，而无需深入思考。这意味着它能让我们思考其他事情。

But the downside of a habit is that you stop thinking while you're doing a habit. So as a result, you become less aware of the negative consequences of that behavior.

但习惯的缺点是，当你在执行习惯时，你会停止思考。因此，你对该行为的负面后果变得不那么敏感。

There is a woman named Wendy Wood who did a study when she was at Duke, and what she found was that about 45% of all the behaviors that someone did in a day was habit. It wasn't decision-making.

一位名叫温迪·伍德的女士在杜克大学时做了一项研究，她发现一个人一天中约45%的行为是习惯性的，而非决策性的。

习惯回路：线索、惯常行为与奖赏

This gets to the way that habits work, which is that there's this thing called the habit loop (Habit Loop: 支配习惯形成方式的神经学回路). There's three parts to it. There's first a cue (Cue: 行为的触发器), which is a trigger for behavior, and then the behavior itself, which we usually refer to as a routine (Routine: 习惯行为本身). And then there's the reward (Reward: 强化行为的积极结果), and the reward is actually why the habit happens in the first place.

这涉及到习惯的运作方式，即存在一种称为习惯回路 (Habit Loop: 支配习惯形成方式的神经学回路) 的机制。它有三个部分：首先是线索 (Cue: 行为的触发器)，它是行为的触发器；然后是行为本身，我们通常称之为惯常行为 (Routine: 习惯行为本身)；最后是奖赏 (Reward: 强化行为的积极结果)，奖赏才是习惯最初发生的原因。

It's how your brain decides, should I remember this pattern for the future or not? And the cue and the reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges that drives your behavior.

这是你的大脑决定是否记住这种模式以备将来之用的方式。线索和奖赏在神经学上相互交织，直到产生一种驱动你行为的渴望感。

If you take this framework and apply it and look at the behaviors that you do, for instance, backing your car out of a driveway, or why you suddenly feel hungry when you see a donut box on the counter at work, but you weren't hungry five minutes earlier, you can find these cues and rewards that explain the behaviors. It's enormously important.

如果你运用这个框架来审视你的行为，例如，把车倒出车道，或者为什么你在工作时看到柜台上的甜甜圈盒会突然感到饥饿，而五分钟前并不饿，你就能找到解释这些行为的线索和奖赏。这极其重要。

Between 1990 and 2000, that is deemed the Decade of the Brain (Decade of the Brain: 1990年至2000年，美国国会指定旨在提高公众对大脑研究认识的十年期). There was a lot of money into studying brain illnesses, brain disease. There was a lot of money in terms of learning about the brain. And during that time, we're looking for some neural footprint (Neural Footprint: 与特定心理状态或行为相关的脑活动或结构变化的特定模式) of addiction.

1990年至2000年间，被称为大脑十年 (Decade of the Brain: 1990年至2000年，美国国会指定旨在提高公众对大脑研究认识的十年期)。当时投入了大量资金研究脑部疾病。在学习大脑方面也投入了大量资金。在此期间，我们正在寻找成瘾的某种神经足迹 (Neural Footprint: 与特定心理状态或行为相关的脑活动或结构变化的特定模式)。

And we thought that once cocaine interacted with these dopamine neurons (Dopamine Neurons: 产生和释放多巴胺的神经细胞，多巴胺是一种参与奖赏和动机的神经递质), it just had this almost magical power over the person's behavior. We've learned that that's not necessarily the case.

我们曾认为，一旦可卡因与这些多巴胺神经元 (Dopamine Neurons: 产生和释放多巴胺的神经细胞，多巴胺是一种参与奖赏和动机的神经递质) 相互作用，它就会对人的行为产生几乎神奇的力量。我们现在知道，情况并非必然如此。

When we think of drug addiction, it's important for the general public to keep the focus on the person's behavior. Are they not showing up for work? Are they not meeting their obligations at home? Are they not meeting their obligations in school? All of these are important indicators of whether someone is drug addicted or not. And notice, I didn't look at anyone's brain. I'm focusing on the person's behavior.

当我们考虑药物成瘾时，对于普通大众 (Lay Audience: 非专业人士) 来说，重要的是将重点放在人的行为上。他们是否旷工？他们是否未履行家庭义务？他们是否未履行学业义务？所有这些都是判断一个人是否药物成瘾的重要指标。请注意，我没有观察任何人的大脑。我真正关注的是这个人的行为。

行为成瘾与现代科技的推波助澜

Behavioral addiction (Behavioral Addiction: 尽管有负面后果，仍强迫性地参与非物质相关的活动，例如赌博、上网) is a lot like substance addiction (Substance Addiction: 尽管有负面后果，仍强迫性地使用精神活性物质) in a lot of ways. Basically what has to happen is that there's a behavior that you enjoy doing in the short term that you do compulsively, so you keep returning to it over and over again, but that in the long term harms your wellbeing and it can harm your wellbeing in lots of different respects.

行为成瘾 (Behavioral Addiction: 尽管有负面后果，仍强迫性地参与非物质相关的活动，例如赌博、上网) 在很多方面都与物质成瘾 (Substance Addiction: 尽管有负面后果，仍强迫性地使用精神活性物质) 非常相似。基本上，它指的是一种你在短期内享受、并且强迫性地反复进行的某项行为，但从长远来看，它会损害你的幸福感，而且可能在许多不同方面造成损害。

And it's much newer. It's a much more recent phenomenon. And I think the reason why we've got these new forms of addiction, there are two main reasons. The first one is that technology is much more sophisticated and advanced than it was even 20 years ago. You're able to deliver the kinds of rewards that you need for a system to be addictive.

它要新得多，是一种更近期的现象。我认为我们之所以出现这些新型成瘾，主要有两个原因。第一个原因是，现在的技术比20年前更加复杂和先进。你能够提供一个系统成为成瘾所需的那种奖励。

Basically what people are looking for is unpredictability and the rapid feedback of either rewards or if it's negative then negative experiences. And you actually need that mix of positive and negative feedback. Just as, for example, when you post something online, sometimes you will get a lot of hits, sometimes you aren't and it's that unpredictability that we find so compelling.

基本上，人们寻求的是不可预测性以及奖励或负面体验的快速反馈。你实际上需要这种积极和消极反馈的混合。就像，例如，当你在线发布内容时，有时你会获得很多关注，有时则不会，正是这种不可预测性让我们觉得如此引人入胜。

Whenever we're bored, whenever we're feeling a little bit lonely, whenever we're not sure what to do with ourselves next, whenever we don't feel particularly efficacious (Efficacious: 能够产生预期效果的), like we're having an effect on the world that we'd like to be having, those are the moments when you're looking for what some people call the adult pacifier (Adult Pacifier: 成年人用来应对压力或无聊的安慰性物品或活动). And smartphones tend to be a great adult pacifier because at those moments, you turn on your screen, you swipe and you feel relaxed again.

每当我们感到无聊、有点孤独、不确定接下来该做什么、或者觉得自己不够有效 (Efficacious: 能够产生预期效果的)，无法对世界产生我们想要的影响时，那些时刻你就会寻找一些人称之为成人安慰剂 (Adult Pacifier: 成年人用来应对压力或无聊的安慰性物品或活动) 的东西。智能手机往往是一个很好的成人安慰剂，因为在那些时刻，你打开屏幕，滑动一下，就会再次感到放松。

改变坏习惯的黄金法则

If you just try and say, "I'm going to use willpower to make this behavior go away," it's not going to work. And we know this from study after study. Every scientist who's worked on habits will tell you, once a neurology of that habit is set, it's always there in some form or another.

如果你只是试图说“我要用意志力让这个行为消失”，那行不通。我们从一项又一项研究中得知这一点。所有研究习惯的科学家都会告诉你，一旦某个习惯的神经学 (Neurology: 研究神经系统及其疾病的科学) 基础确立，它就总会以某种形式存在。

What you need to do is instead of thinking about eradicating this bad habit or just using willpower to force your way through, ignoring it, is to change it. And there's this thing that's known as the golden rule of habit change (Golden Rule of Habit Change: 一条原则，指出要改变一个习惯，应保持相同的线索和奖赏，但改变惯常行为), which is if a habit is made up of a cue, a routine, and a reward, you can't change all three parts at once. In fact, you shouldn't even try.

你需要做的是改变它，而不是想着根除这个坏习惯，或者仅仅用意志力强行克服它、忽视它。有一条被称为习惯改变的黄金法则 (Golden Rule of Habit Change: 一条原则，指出要改变一个习惯，应保持相同的线索和奖赏，但改变惯常行为) 的理论，那就是如果一个习惯由线索、惯常行为和奖赏组成，你不能同时改变所有三个部分。事实上，你甚至不应该尝试。

What you really want to change is you want to change the routine, the behavior. And to do that, you need to keep the same cue and deliver the same reward, and you'll be able to shoehorn (Shoehorn: 勉强塞入或强行纳入) that new behavior into your daily pattern.

你真正想要改变的是惯常行为，即那个行为本身。为此，你需要保持相同的线索并提供相同的奖赏，这样你就能将那个新行为勉强塞入 (Shoehorn: 勉强塞入或强行纳入) 你的日常模式中。

You can't change everything overnight. You can't suddenly say, I want a brand new habit tomorrow, and expect it to be easy and effortless. It's something you have to give yourself permission to take a little bit of time to practice because you're building up neural pathways (Neural Pathways: 大脑中神经元之间的连接，传递电信号，是学习和记忆的基础) associated with a certain behavior, and those neural pathways just build up over time. You can't speed up that process any more than is natural.

你不能一夜之间改变所有事情。你不能突然说，我明天想要一个全新的习惯，并期望它变得轻松不费力。你需要允许自己花一点时间去练习，因为你正在建立与特定行为相关的神经通路 (Neural Pathways: 大脑中神经元之间的连接，传递电信号，是学习和记忆的基础)，而这些神经通路只能随着时间慢慢建立。你无法加速这个过程，使其超过自然的速度。