Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

showing addicts a picture of cocaine for just thirty-three milliseconds
: Fran Smith, “How
Science Is Unlocking the Secrets of Addiction,” National Geographic, September 2017,
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/the-addicted-brain
.
CHAPTER 8
Niko Tinbergen performed a series of experiments
: Nikolaas Tinbergen, The Herring Gull’s World
(London: Collins, 1953); “Nikolaas Tinbergen,” New World Encyclopedia,
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Nikolaas_Tinbergen
, last modified September
30, 2016.
the goose will pull any nearby round object
: James L. Gould, Ethology: The Mechanisms and
Evolution of Behavior (New York: Norton, 1982), 36–41.
the modern food industry relies on stretching
: Steven Witherly, Why Humans Like Junk Food
(New York: IUniverse, 2007).
Nearly every food in a bag
: “Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings,” 60 Minutes, November 27,
2011. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Wh3uq1yTc
.
French fries . . . are a potent combination
: Steven Witherly, Why Humans Like Junk Food (New
York: IUniverse, 2007).
such strategies enable food scientists to find the “bliss point”
: Michael Moss, Salt, Sugar, Fat:
How the Food Giants Hooked Us (London: Allen, 2014).
“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, 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).