Curiosity is an innate part of human nature, what drives us to learn and adapt to new environments, and for the first time, scientists have pinpointed where in the brain curiosity originates.
The discovery was made by researchers at Columbia University in the United States. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans measure oxygen levels in different parts of the brain, showing how busy each area is at any one time.
Understanding where curiosity comes from could help us better understand human behavior and potentially lead to treatments for illnesses where curiosity is lacking, such as chronic depression.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to link the subjective feeling of curiosity about information with the way the brain represents that information.” To tell Neuroscientist Jacqueline Gottlieb.
During the experiment, the researchers presented 32 participants with special images called “textforms,” ​​which featured familiar objects and animals, such as hats and frogs, distorted to varying degrees. Participants were asked to rate their confidence and curiosity in identifying the subject of each textform.
These assessments were cross-referenced with fMRI scans, which found significant activity in three areas. Occipitotemporal cortex (related to vision and object recognition), Ventromedial prefrontal cortex or the vmPFC (which manages perceptions of worth and self-confidence), and Anterior cingulate cortex (Used to gather information).
The vmPFC appears to act as a neural bridge between the confidence recorded by the occipitotemporal cortex and the subjective feeling of curiosity — a kind of trigger that tells you when to be curious: the less confident the subjects were about the subject of the image, the more curious they were about it.
“These results reveal how sensory input is transformed by successive neural representations, ultimately evoking the emotion of curiosity.” write The researchers stated in their published paper:
As well as potential therapeutic value, the researchers hope to explore how these findings apply to other types of curiosity beyond image discrimination, such as curiosity about trivia or facts, or social curiosity about the activities of others.
What makes this research so exciting is that curiosity is a fundamental human trait and key to our survival as a species: without it, we would be poor at learning and absorbing new information, and there’s evidence that curiosity drives biodiversity.
“Curiosity has deep biological origins” To tell Gottlieb.
“Human curiosity is unique in that it motivates us to explore much more widely than other animals, and in many cases this is not driven by any material reward or survival advantage, but simply by a desire to know things.”
This study Neuroscience Journal.
