New Year's resolutions: Have you broken yours?

Making a New Year's resolution may be putting your dukes up against evolution and your brain's own programming.

But don't despair. Change is difficult, but not impossible. The key may lie in persistence and choosing the right motivation, scientists say.

"We have this view of ourselves as being the agents of our own behavior," said Todd Braver, a cognitive neuroscientist at Washington University.

But Braver and other scientists who study thought patterns are learning that we are actually at the mercy of our brain cells. In his laboratory, Braver places volunteers in a brain-scanning functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) and gives them a simple task: press a button with the left hand every time an X appears on the screen. After some time, he tells them to switch to pressing the button with the right hand when an X appears.

The button-pressing task is a model for more complex tasks, such as remembering to stop for groceries instead of driving straight home, Braver said.

When volunteers are concentrating on the new button-pressing task - and probably when people remind themselves to pick up groceries or dry cleaning - a part of the brain located just behind the temples and forehead becomes active, Braver found. That part of the brain, called the lateral prefrontal cortex, is involved in keeping goals, resolutions and other things in mind.

But simply having the goal in mind may not be enough to overcome years of bad habits if a person isn't motivated, Braver said.

"There's a difference between saying 'I have the goal to lose weight' and having that goal actively in mind when reaching for that second cookie," Braver said. "Part of the reason you eat that second cookie is not that you forgot the goal to lose weight, but because (the cookie) tastes great."

•	New Year's resolutions: Have you broken yours? St. Louis Post-Disptach, Saturday, Jan. 1, 2005 Byline: Tina Hesman of the Post-Dispatch

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