Overcoming the persistence of first-learned habits to maintain behavioral change

描述（由申请人提供）：积极的行为改变对改善健康至关重要。虽然这些变化通常可以通过干预来实现，但长期维持这些变化可能非常困难，正如本RFA所强调的那样。为了最有效地促进健康相关行为的持续有益改变，有必要了解如何取代和维持行为。这里提出的工作将集中在理解支持行为改变的实施和维护的大脑系统。我们的工作是基于这样一种观点，即首次学习的行为和后来学习的行为之间存在根本的差异，这导致了与它们要取代的旧行为相比，维持新行为的持久困难。虽然后习行为通常被视为“取代”先习行为，但有大量的行为证据表明，先习行为在消失时不会被覆盖，而是保留在一种潜在状态。此外，次要行为的维持似乎需要在获得新反应的同时继续抑制主要行为。最后，次要行为似乎比主要行为更依赖于上下文，这导致对新情况的概括能力下降。结合复杂的神经成像技术，本研究将描述与首次学习行为和后学习行为相关的大脑过程，并测试一套方法来提高后学习行为的弹性，最终目标是提高行为改变干预的长期有效性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Positive changes in behavior are essential to improved health. Whereas such changes can often be instituted through intervention, long-term maintenance of these changes can be very difficult, as highlighted in this RFA. An understanding of how behaviors can be replaced and maintained is necessary in order to most effectively promote sustained beneficial changes in health-related behavior. The work proposed here will focus on understanding the brain systems that support the implementation and maintenance of behavioral change. Our work is based on the idea that there are fundamental differences between first-learned behaviors and later- learned behaviors, which result in lasting difficulties in maintenance of new behaviors in comparison to the old ones that they are meant to supplant. Although later-learned behaviors are often viewed as "replacing" first- learned ones, there is substantial behavioral evidence that first-learned behaviors are not over-written as they are extinguished, but instead are retained in a latent state. Further, it appears that maintenance of a secondary behavior requires continued suppression of the primary one in addition to acquisition of the new response. Finally, secondary behaviors appear to be substantially more context-dependent than primary ones, which results in decreased generalization to new situations. Using a combination of sophisticated neuroimaging techniques, the proposed work will characterize the brain processes that are associated with first-learned versus later-learned behaviors, and test a set of methods to improve the resilience of later-learned behaviors, with the ultimate goal of improving the long-term effectiveness of behavior change interventions. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Many public health problems, from obesity to heart disease to cancer to drug abuse, could be reduced by changes in behavior, but it is notoriously hard to overcome unhealthy behaviors in a lasting way. The research proposed here would investigate a previously neglected reason for this difficulty, and provide an understanding of the basic brain mechanisms that may make it difficult to overcome bad habits as well as testing several possible ways to improve the long-term effectiveness of behavioral change.