Every time I drive home from work, I don’t remember the drive, like I don’t.
What the hell is going on?
Hey guys Julia here for DNews
I know you’re just sitting there, but right now your brain is buzzing a million miles
an hour.
Doing the same thing every day, brushing your teeth, driving to work, your brain just kind
of runs on autopilot.
Our brains like routine, we like familiar things.
and a lot of routines wind up becoming part of that autopilot mode.
So how does that happen?
How does your brain just turn into a zombie?
There’s a lot going on when you switch from autopilot to on mode. and different parts
of your brain control these different modes.
Let’s look at two main brain regions.
When you’re brain’s just on zombie mode when you’re in, let's say, the elevator
on your way to work and you haven’t had any coffee yet, your dorsal lateral striatum
pushed the 3rd floor button for you.
But when you’re on goal-direct mode on vacation in Hawaii on your way to go snorkeling your
dorsal MEDIAL striatum hits the lobby button.
Studies like one published in the journal Neuron- show that the two areas of the brain,
the dorsal lateral striatum and the dorsal medial striatum work in tandem when learning
a new task and turning it into a habit.
When researchers looked at the activity of neurons in rats learning to navigate a maze,
they found that the dorsolateral striatal neurons were particularly active at certain
points in the maze.
Mostly whenever an action had to be performed like stopping or turning.
Which makes sense since these neurons play a part in movement.
The researchers found that these neurons’s activity increased as the rats got better
at the maze and sort of leveled out after a while.
While on the other hand activity in the dorsal medial striatum decreased as the rats got
better.
Basically the better they learned the maze, they less they had to think about it.
So the maze sort of becomes muscle memory.
And a study published in the journal Science Communications found that a third region of
the brain, the orbital frontal cortex (OFC), shifts the gears between those two modes.
But those aren’t the only areas of the brain that helps you get a routine down.
In one study published in the journal,Neuron researchers found that the Rostrolateral prefontal
cortex (RLPFC), an area of neurons situated in the front of your brain, keeps you on task
while you learn a routine.
The researchers found that if they stimulated this part of the brain while study participants
were focused on a task, they would make more mistakes.
The researchers found using fMRI techniques that activity in this part of the brain goes
up and down as a participant worked their way through a series of tasks.
They think this is due to some uncertainty they face as they make a choice.
Apparently this part of the brain helps resolve some of that uncertainty.
So after we’ve learned a task, it becomes routine and there’s no uncertainty.
And other studies show that once you’ve learned something, since there’s no more
uncertainty, you’re not making decisions anymore.
You basically do the same thing based on a decision you’ve made many times before.
And researchers think this helps to conserve cognitive resources.
So when you’re running on autopilot, basically your brain hates thinking and wants to do
as little of it as possible to save energy.
So hurry up and make things routine, you brain needs to rest.
Want to get someone else on a routine?
Maybe one day we could change someone’s behavior just by flipping a switch.
or reprogramming a few neurons.