Curiosity stems from the desire to know and is expressed in exploratory behaviour or attitudes in the surrounding environment or in one's inner world. The willingness to experience new things is therefore considered a necessary prerequisite for learning and for enriching the wealth of experience that has enabled individuals to survive in their habitat over the course of evolution, seeking out what brings pleasure (e.g. eating) and fleeing from what causes suffering and pain.
Exploring and surviving in a complex environment is not easy. Memory and the brain's ability to adapt to experiences through brain plasticity mechanisms are invaluable tools that enable humans to avoid possible dangers or to deal effectively with situations they have already experienced.
In this context, researchers at Vanderbilt University have wondered where curiosity comes from and whether the urge to investigate the unknown is innate or the product of neurobiological processes similar to those that drive individuals to sleep, eat or drink.
The results of investigations in mice were recently published in the journal Science and revealed that curiosity is the product of a process involving the neurotransmitter Gaba (γ-aminobutyric acid) and a population of neurons in the uncertain zone of the brain (a nuclear grouping whose actual functions are unknown. It is an extension of the reticular formation of the midbrain and is connected through nerve networks to the thalamus and seems to be involved in processes related to sleep, hunger and fear).
This discovery, although requiring further confirmation and investigation, challenges the belief that curiosity is triggered by the expectation of reward.
Bibliography
Farahbakhsh, Zahra Z., and Cody A. Siciliano. "Neurobiology of novelty seeking." Science 372.6543 (2021): 684-685.
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