“We showed that intrinsic motivation actually recruits some of the same brain areas that are heavily involved in tangible, extrinsic motivation. The scientists also discovered that when curiosity is stimulated, there is increased activity in the brain circuit related to reward. He added: “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.” “These findings suggest ways to enhance learning in the classroom and other settings.” “Our findings potentially have far-reaching implications for the public because they reveal insights into how a form of intrinsic motivation – curiosity – affects memory,” said Dr Matthias Gruber, who is the first author of the paper published in the journal Neuron. The participants were also better able to retain the information learned during a curious state across a 24-hour delay. More surprising, however, was that once their curiosity was aroused, they showed better learning of entirely unrelated information that they encountered but were not necessarily curious about. The participants were presented with a selected trivia question and while they waited for the answer to pop up on the screen, they were shown a picture of a neutral, unrelated face.Īfterwards, they performed a surprise recognition memory test for the presented faces, followed by a memory test for the answers to the trivia questions.Īs expected, when people were highly curious to find out the answer to a question, they were better at learning that information. Later, they had their brains scanned via functional magnetic resonance imaging while they learned the answers to these questions.
#Science et vie ou les cahiers de science et vie series#
Participants in the study first rated their curiosity about the answers to a series of trivia questions. Anonymous painter, 15th century – Cahiers de Science et Vie no.
Curiosity helps learning and memory, scientists say.