Linking a bad habit to a positive replacement behavior can remap neural circuits associated with bad habits.

“The first one is you start to link in time the execution of a bad behavior to this other good behavior. In other words, you start to create a kind of a double habit that starts with a bad habit and then ends with a good habit.”

“But really what you're trying to do is you're trying to change the nature of the neural circuits that are firing so that you can rewrite the script for that bad habit. And so when people have applied this kind of approach, it removes the need to have constant conscious awareness of one's own behavior prior to that behavior which is very very difficult to achieve.”

“So it turns out that the key to generating long-term depression in these pathways is actually to take the period immediately following the bad habit execution and in that moment capture the sequence of events not that led to the bad habit execution but actually to take advantage of the fact that the neurons that were responsible for generating that bad habit were were active a moment ago and to actually engage in a replacement behavior immediately afterward.”