Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

“We’ve gotten too good at pushing our own buttons”
: This quote originally appeared
in Stephan Guyenet, “Why Are Some People ‘Carboholics’?” July 26, 2017,
http://www.stephanguyenet.com/why-are-some-people-carboholics
. The adapted
version is given with permission granted in an email exchange with the author in April
2018.
The importance of dopamine
: “The 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. The precise placement of
the electrode was largely happenstance; at the time, the geography of the mind
remained a mystery. But Olds and Milner got lucky. They 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. They placed
the electrodes in several rodents’ brains and then ran a small current into each wire,

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making the NAccs continually excited. The scientists noticed that the rodents lost
interest in everything. They stopped eating and drinking. All courtship behavior ceased.
The rats would just huddle in the corners of their cages, transfixed by their bliss. Within
days, all of the animals had perished. They died of thirst. For more, see Jonah Lehrer,
How We Decide (Boston: 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 Rat Brain,” Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 47, no. 6
(1954), doi:10.1037/h0058775.