Curiosity leads to changes in structure of the brain, a new study shows.
Researchers said that the findings might help understand how curiosity makes learning and memorizing easier. According to them, it could help boost cognition in both healthy people and patients with neurological problems.
"Our findings potentially have far-reaching implications for the public because they reveal insights into how a form of intrinsic motivation - curiosity - affects memory. These findings suggest ways to enhance learning in the classroom and other settings," lead author Matthias Gruber, of University of California at Davis, said in a press release.
For the study, the researchers told the participants to rate their curiosity to learn answers to a few trivia questions. Following this, they were shown a certain trivia question for 14 seconds before the answer was given and a photograph of a neutral, unrelated face.
In the second phase of the study, the team told the participants to undertake a surprise recognition memory test for the faces that were shown, and a memory test for the answers to the trivia questions. Researchers said that the brains of participants were scanned via fMRI during certain parts of the study.
The findings showed three main points. They found that people are better at learning when the topic piques their interest. Apart from this, the study revealed that curiosity also enhanced learning of entirely unrelated information like the face recognition task, according to the researchers.
"Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it," Gruber said.
Another finding showed that the brain circuit associated with reward exhibited increased activity.
"We showed that intrinsic motivation actually recruits the very same brain areas that are heavily involved in tangible, extrinsic motivation," Gruber explained.
And finally and importantly, researchers found an increased activity in the hippocampus, which is important for forming new memories, and increased communication between the hippocampus and reward circuit.
"So curiosity recruits the reward system, and interactions between the reward system and the hippocampus seem to put the brain in a state in which you are more likely to learn and retain information, even if that information is not of particular interest or importance," principal investigator Charan Ranganath, PhD., of the University of California at Davis concluded.
The findings were published in the journal Neuron.
