Induction and Relief of Curiosity Elicit Parietal and Frontal Activity

Abstract

Curiosity is a basic biological drive, but little is known about its behavioral and neural mechanisms. We can be curious about several types of information. On the one hand, curiosity is a function of the expected value of information, serving primarily to help us maximize reward. On the other hand, curiosity can be a function of the uncertainty of information, helping us to update what we know. In the current studies, we aimed to disentangle the contribution of information uncertainty and expected value of rewards to curiosity in humans of either sex. To this end, we designed a lottery task in which uncertainty and expected value of trial outcomes were manipulated independently, and examined how neural activity and behavioral measures of curiosity were modulated by these factors. Curiosity increased linearly with increased outcome uncertainty, both when curiosity was explicitly probed as well as when it was implicitly tested by people's willingness to wait. Increased expected value, however, did not strongly relate to these curiosity measures. Neuroimaging results showed greater BOLD response with increasing outcome uncertainty in parietal cortex at the time of curiosity induction. Outcome updating when curiosity was relieved resulted in an increased signal in the insula, orbitofrontal cortex and parietal cortex. Furthermore, the insula showed a linear increase corresponding to the size of the information update. These results suggest that curiosity is monotonically related to the uncertainty about one's current world model, the induction and relief of which are associated with activity in parietal and insular cortices respectively.Humans are curious by nature. When you hear your phone beep, you probably feel the urge to check the message right away, even though the message itself likely doesn't give you a direct reward. In this study, we demonstrated that curiosity can be driven by outcome uncertainty, irrespective of reward. The induction of curiosity was accompanied by increased activity in the parietal cortex, whereas the information update at the time of curiosity relief was associated with activity in insular cortex. These findings advance our understanding of the behavioral and neural constituents of curiosity, which lies at the core of human information-seeking and serves to optimize the individual's current world-model.

Curiosity or savouring? Information seeking is modulated by both uncertainty and valence.

“…all outcomes were obtained regardless of their curiosity decisions). These findings suggest that our drive to seek information is a function of the size of an information gap rather than merely the likelihood of reward maximization and concurs with the proposal that curiosity represents a drive to improve one's current model of the world (van Lieshout et al, 2018).…”

“…Previous work has indicated that participants are curious about information because it might reduce their uncertainty (i.e Berlyne, 1962;Blanchard et al, 2015;Bromberg-Martin & Hikosaka, 2009, 2011Stagner & Zentall, 2010, van Lieshout et al, 2018. For instance, our recent study indicated that when the uncertainty about the outcome of a lottery was higher, participants exhibited higher curiosity ratings and greater willingness to wait (WTW) for information about those outcomes (van Lieshout et al, 2018).…”

“…However, we are also curious about information that does not directly inform action or maximize reward (i.e. Bromberg-Martin & Hikosaka, 2009, 2011Charpentier, Bromberg-Martin, & Sharot, 2018;Kobayashi, Ravaioli, Baranès, Woodford, & Gottlieb, 2019;van Lieshout, Vandenbroucke, Müller, Cools, & de Lange, 2018).…”

“…Sometimes we are even willing to sacrifice scarce resources, such as money or time to satisfy our curiosity (i.e. Blanchard, Hayden, & Bromberg-Martin, 2015;Stagner & Zentall, 2010;van Lieshout et al, 2018).…”

Do you share your personally useless information if others may benefit from it?

“…We have stepped into the information era, and so the quest to keep ourselves being informed of a vast number of diverse topics occupies a major portion of our time and effort [1][2][3][4] . While the thirst for ecologically beneficial information is understandable, surprisingly, these days, we eagerly look for personally useless or non-instrumental information as well [5][6][7][8] .…”