Habits

Youna Vandaele, PhD, is a neuroscientist working in the field of decision-making, behavioral control and addiction at the Inserm laboratory of experimental and clinical neurosciences, at the University of Poitiers, France.

Section I: Definitions, operationalization and investigation of habits.- Defining and Measuring Habits Across Different Fields of Research.- Outcome devaluation as a means for distinguishing habits from goal-directed actions.- Situating habit and goal direction in a general view of instrumental behavior.- The rate-correlation theory of goal-directed behavior: an update.- Multi-plasticities: Distinguishing context-specific habits from complex perseverations.- Section II: The neurobiology of habit.- Navigation through the complex world - the neurophysiology of decision-making processes.- Alternative Approaches to Understanding Habit Learning in the Dorsolateral Striatum.- Prefrontal control of actions and habits.- The Role of Dopamine in Training Automaticity.- Historical and Modern Perspectives on the Neuroscience of Habits.- Section III: The place of habit in addiction.- Goal-directed and habitual control in human drug addiction.- The role of implicit associations in alcohol and substance use disorders.- Impulsivity and compulsivity in Bayesian reinforcement learning models of addiction: a computational critique of the habit theory.- Interaction between habitual and goal-directed processes in addiction.