Shared striatal activity in decisions to satisfy curiosity and hunger at the risk of electric shocks

Abstract

1Curiosity is often portrayed as a desirable feature of human faculty. However, curiosity 2 may come at a cost that sometimes puts people in a harmful situation. Here, with a set of 3 behavioural and neuroimaging experiments using stimuli that strongly trigger curiosity (e.g., 4 magic tricks), we examined the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the irresistible 5 lure of curiosity. We consistently demonstrated that across different samples, people were indeed 6 willing to gamble, subjecting themselves to physical risks (i.e. electric shocks) in order to satisfy

How curiosity enhances hippocampus-dependent memory: The Prediction-Appraisal-Curiosity-Exploration (PACE) Framework

“…Consistent with this idea, the large majority of fMRI studies on curiosity have reported activation in the ACC [5,18,23,48,49]. For example, whole-brain analyses demonstrate enhanced ACC activation elicited by high-compared with low-curiosity trivia questions [5,18] and by high compared with low perceptual uncertainty about an upcoming scene image [23].…”

“…To measure different degrees of curiosity during a state of curiosity, most studies have relied on participants' self-reported subjective curiosity ratings [5,15,16,23,26,27]. Other studies have operationalized curiosity in a more objective manner by measuring willingness to wait for an answer [3,4,6] or to sacrifice rewards (e.g., water in nonhuman primate studies, limited tokens or money in humans) [3,20,71] or by giving participants a choice of which stimuli they would like to experience [48,49,89]. In general, the available evidence suggests that subjective curiosity ratings positively correlate with objective curiosity measures that implicitly test curiosity via willingness to sacrifice scarce resources [3,4,6].…”

“…For example, whole-brain analyses demonstrate enhanced ACC activation elicited by high-compared with low-curiosity trivia questions [5,18] and by high compared with low perceptual uncertainty about an upcoming scene image [23]. In addition, curiosity-related ACC activity seems to be evident in curiosity paradigms in which participants act on their curiosity and choose which stimuli that they would like to see [48,49]. For example, if participants are highly curious about the revelation of a magic trick that is also associated with receiving a potential electric shock, participants show increased ACC activity when they accept the risk to satisfy their curiosity about the magic trick [48].…”

“…In addition, curiosity-related ACC activity seems to be evident in curiosity paradigms in which participants act on their curiosity and choose which stimuli that they would like to see [48,49]. For example, if participants are highly curious about the revelation of a magic trick that is also associated with receiving a potential electric shock, participants show increased ACC activity when they accept the risk to satisfy their curiosity about the magic trick [48]. In addition, enhanced ACC activity seems to be evident when participants choose to see negatively valued information (i.e., morbid curiosity) compared with passively viewing the choice cue [49].…”

Process Account of Curiosity and Interest: A Reward-Learning Perspective

“…Loewenstein (1994) also argued that the awareness of knowledge gaps shifts people's attention to the lack of knowledge, and this aversive feeling of deprivation is the driving force of people's curious behavior (i.e., loss aversion). One of the reasons why this idea has attracted popularity is that it can explain strong seductive power of curiosity, which sometimes lead people to make irrational decisions (e.g., Hsee and Ruan 2016;Lau et al 2018;Oosterwijk 2017). However, this idea is still controversial and empirical evidence is not conclusive (Ruan et al 2018;Silvia 2006).…”