Habits, Rituals, and the Evaluative Brain
Summary
Neuroscientist Ann Graybiel reviews why habits grip us, running on control “scarcely available to consciousness”. Many routines, rituals and the repetitive behaviours of addiction and illness, she suggests, could emerge as experience reshapes circuits in the basal ganglia, deep in the brain. “Culturally based rituals”, she proposes, may reflect how those circuits work with the cortex.
Rationale
If rituals run on the brain’s habit machinery, as she suggests, the lifestage rituals we name among contexts for other dispositions may matter more than they look.
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