Switching between habitual and goal-directed actions: A 'two in one' system in our brain. ScienceDaily . Retrieved June 2, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com / releases / 2013 / 08 / 130806132754.htm ...

"We need a balance between habitual and goal-directed actions. For everyday function, we need to be able to make routine actions quickly and efficiently, and habits serve this purpose," Gremel said.

Understanding the effects of motivation on instrumental action selection, and specifically on its two main forms, goal-directed and habitual control, is fundamental to the study of decision making.

By chemically inhibiting the activity of neurons in the OFC, they disrupted goal-directed behaviors and the mice relied on habitual actions instead. “Mice were trained to receive a food reward in two ...

These learning processes are thought to govern goal-directed and habitual actions, respectively, and have been found to depend on homologous corticostriatal networks in these species.

Shifting between goal-directed and habitual actions allows for efficient and flexible decision making. Here we demonstrate a novel, within-subject instrumental lever-pressing paradigm, in which ...

Experimental procedures. Credit: Nature Human Behaviour (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02215-4 ...