Curiosity is a core human trait. It drives us to learn and adapt to new environments. For the first time, scientists have identified the place in the brain where curiosity emerges.
The discovery was made by researchers at Columbia University in the United States, who used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure oxygen levels in different parts of the brain, indicating how active each region is at any given time.
Knowing where curiosity comes from could help us better understand how humans work and potentially lead to therapies for diseases where curiosity is lacking, such as chronic depression.
“This is really the first time we’ve been able to connect the subjective feeling of curiosity about information to how your brain represents that information,” says neuroscientist Jacqueline Gottlieb.
In their experiments, the researchers gave 32 participants special images called texforms, in which familiar objects and animals—like hats or frogs—were distorted to varying degrees. The volunteers were asked to rate their confidence and curiosity in identifying the subject of each texform.
These assessments were cross-referenced with fMRI scans, and notable activity was found in three regions: the occipitotemporal cortex (related to vision and object recognition), the ventromedial prefrontal cortex or vmPFC (which manages perceptions of value and trust), and the anterior cingulate cortex (used for information gathering).
The vmPFC appears to act as a kind of neurological bridge between the levels of certainty registered by the occipitotemporal cortex and subjective feelings of curiosity – almost like a trigger telling us when to be curious. The less confident the volunteers were about the object in the image, the more curious they were about it.
“These results illustrate how perceptual information is transformed by successive neural representations to ultimately evoke a feeling of curiosity,” the researchers write in their published paper.
Beyond their potential therapeutic value, the researchers also want to explore how these findings might apply to other types of curiosity beyond image identification: curiosity about anecdotes and facts, for example, or social curiosity about the activities of others.
What makes this research so fascinating is that curiosity is a fundamental part of being human, essential to our survival as a species. Without it, we are not as good at learning and absorbing new information, and it has been shown to also promote biodiversity.
“Curiosity has deep biological origins,” Gottlieb says.
“What distinguishes human curiosity is that it drives us to explore much more widely than other animals, and often simply because we want to discover things, not because we seek material reward or survival advantage.”
The research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
News Source : www.sciencealert.com
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