Brain-imaging study reveals curiosity as it emerges

In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists revealed brain areas that appear to assess the degree of uncertainty in visually ambiguous situations, giving rise to subjective feelings of curiosity.

Curiosity has deep biological origins," said corresponding author Jacqueline Gottlieb, PhD, a principal investigator at the Zuckerman Institute. The primary evolutionary benefit of curiosity, she added, is to encourage living things to explore their world in ways that help them survive.

"What distinguishes human curiosity is that it drives us to explore much more broadly than other animals, and often just because we want to find things out, not because we are seeking a material reward or survival benefit," said Dr. Gottlieb, who is also a professor of neuroscience at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. "This leads to a lot of our creativity."

In the study, researchers employed a noninvasive, widely used technology to measure changes in the blood-oxygen levels in the brains of 32 volunteers. Called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, the technology enabled the scientists to record how much oxygen different parts of the subjects' brains consumed as they viewed images. The more oxygen a brain region consumes, the more active it is.

To unveil those brain areas involved in curiosity, the research team presented participants with special images known as texforms. These are images of objects, such as a walrus, frog, tank or hat, that have been distorted to various degrees to make them more or less difficult to recognize.

The researchers asked participants to rate their confidence and curiosity about each texform, and found that the two ratings were inversely related. The more confident subjects were that they knew what the texform depicts, the less curious they were about it. Conversely, the less confident subjects were that they could guess what the texform was, the more curious they were about it.