Lecture 2: What is curiosity? What are the neural underpinnings?

Question 1

What is the first main curiosity study?

Answer 1

Wick in the candle of learning: Kang et al

Trivia paradigm

Question 2

What is the trivia paradigm?

Answer 2

1. Trivia question
2. Ratings
   (key = how curious - likert scale)
   (how confident are you - prior knowledge)
3. Answer is displayed

Question 3

What is the screening stage in the trivia paradigm?

Answer 3

Show pool of trivia questions: when ppts say they do not know the answers - these are then taken into the paradigm
Need unknown answers to see how curious they are

Question 4

What did Wade and Kidd find in their study about participants confidence>

Answer 4

Used trivia paradigm: Ps write down answers and an independent rater judges how close they are to the correct answer

Show a strong positive correlation with confidence rating (the more confident ppts are, the more curious they are)

Show a positive correlation: more ppts knew the answer to the question the higher

Question 5

What is the goldilocks principle?

Answer 5

Kidd et al: level of knowledge / confidence has to be just right to elicit curiosity

Too much: overloaded
Not enough: not enough to elicit curiosity

This is what Kidd et al found: Measured infants looking away procedure
- confidence and complexity was important

Question 6

What are some objective measures of curiosity?

Answer 6

1. Spending a token: asked if ps want to spend limited token answers to a question - MORE curious, MORE likely to answer a question (Kang et al)
2. Wait time: Ask p’s if they are willing to wait for an answer or skip to the next question
   - Marvin and Shohamy: when curiosity is higher, there is an 80% higher chance of waiting

Question 7

What is the lottery task?

Answer 7

Van Lieshout created a lottery task:

• Ps = vase with a mix of red and blue marbles, which are associated with different monetary values.
• Ps were instructed that one marble would be randomly selected from the vase, and that they would gain/lose the money associated with the marble.
• Enabled independent manipulation of the uncertainty and expected value of lottery outcomes, as well as lottery outcome valence (whether the lottery contained gains or losses).

Question 8

Explain Van Lieshout’s study

Answer 8

In experiment 1: ppts were asked to rate how curious they were of the outcome of the lottery

Experiment 2: time - participants had to wait to see the outcome

Question 9

What did Van Lieshout find? (1)

Answer 9

Experiment 1:
Curiosity rating: scale positively with outome uncertainty (the more uncertain you are that a red / blue dot will be chosen, the more curious you are)

Value does NOT modulate curiosity: the higher value balls, did not make a difference on how curious participants were

Question 10

What did Van Lieshout find? (2)

Answer 10

Experiment 2:
Willingness to wait positively correlated with outcome uncertainty

Value did NOT correlate

Question 11

What did Oosterwick study?

Answer 11

Choice paradigm: choose whether they want to see an image (clear) or not (blurred)

Morbid curiosity
Negative stimuli is salient - people are drawn to this more than neutral images

Question 12

What is perceptual curiosity?

Answer 12

Difficult to study

Jepma: blurred image -are you curious to see the real image?

Cohanpour et al: similar to the trivia paradigm:
1. textform images (blurry / scrambled)
2. How confident are you?
- inverted U shape
- level of curiosity - not very high

Hsiung et al: line drawings: watch as someone draws
- Stop video: give rating
- results: negative slope (high confidence: curiosity is lower)

Question 13

How can we adapt behavioral paradigms to brain imaging?

Answer 13

Everything has to be done by button presses: too loud (cannot hear)

Gruber et al: use a paradigm similar to trivia
Lots of trials and repetitions
50 low, 50 high etc - average brain signal

Started with screening: trivia shown (confidence and curiosity)
Good guess: don’t take any further
The ones without a guess: take through to the trial phase
Expensive and time consuming therefore need to be SURE the questions asked elcite a range of curiosity

Question 14

Gruber brain imagining results

Answer 14

Positive relationship
Ppts rated to be highly curious, brain activity was higher in the NAcc and the VTA

Surprising you see this even after the repetition
Only see this when curiosity is elicited NOT when curiosity is satisfied - dopamine is a wanting system not positivity in general

Question 15

What is the dopaminergic midbrain?

Answer 15

Key neurotransmitter in the brain

Starts within the VTA: ventral tegmental area
(origin of dopamine release)
Main output: Nucleus accumbens which is located in ventral striatum
Also projects to the hippocampus etc

Question 16

How can you tackle the ecological validity?

Answer 16

Covid
Sent ppts who were previously in lab and asked them how they informed themselves / frequently / duration / diversity

If dopaminergic system is important in the wanting system, does the previous brain scan impact

Results:
Curiosity trait measure correlated with how often ppts looked at info relating to covid 19

Brain: functional connectivity between the VTA and the NAcc: this predicted curiosity AND frequency of info relating to COVID

Question 17

Brain study: Oosterwijk

Answer 17

Compare negative vs neutral image
Also active vs passive choosing

See the dopaminergic system (NAcc and the VTA): specific to the elicitation of curiosity
- morbid NOT happiness
- wanting system

Question 18

Aim of Kang et al study:

Answer 18

To explore what the neural correlates of curiosity are and whether curiosity enhances memory

Question 19

Kang et al method (expt 1)

Answer 19

19 ppts were scanned using fMRI

40 trivia questions were presented
After reading: instructed to silently guess and indicate their curiosity about the correct answer and the confidence in their guess

Question 20

Kang et al results expt 1

Answer 20

Curiosity and confidence ratings: Curiosity was a ushape based: no confidence = low curiosity, high confidence = low curiosity

Brain areas:
* Curiosity was correlated with activity in the caudate when a question was first presented - it is well established that the caudate is involved in the reward anticipation
* When the answers were revealed, activations in areas linked to learning and memory were much stronger if the subject’s prior guess had been incorrect, rather than correct.

Question 21

Kang et al method: expt 2

Answer 21

16 students

Same as expt 1 except ppts were invited to follow up within 11-16 days (surprised)
Follow up: shown the same questions and asked to recall the correct answers - earn 0.25 dollars for each correct answer
Also, measure pupil dilation response using an eye tracker

Question 22

Kang et al expt 2 results:

Answer 22

Pupil dilation: on high curiosity trials, PDRs ramped up to 1-2 seconds before answer of the answer display
: sig higher for higher curiosity than middle

Curiosity and memory:
Curiosity expressed in the initial session = strong effect on subsequent recall on the answers to the questions that were initially guessed incorrectly
Consistent with fMRI = suggests that curiosity activates memory regions differentially in response to surprising (incorrectly guessed answers) resulting in greater accuracy of subsequent memory for the correct answers

Question 23

Kang et al: expt 3 method

Answer 23

Expt 3 was a behavioural study
Ppts were assigned to 1 / 2 conditions: token vs time
Token: given 25 tokens, could spend them to get the answer

Time: time could be anywhere between 5 and 25 seconds: could skip the time nad go to next question

Question 24

Kang et al: expt 3 results

Answer 24

Token and time willing to wait strongly correlated with curiosity

Question 25

Gruber et al study aim / method:

Answer 25

wanted to explore the effects of curiosity on memory and the neural mechanisms to drive this

Trivia paradigm
Scanned during the encoding of these answers along with a set of neutral, unrelated face stimuli (in anticipation period)
After: surprise memory test

Question 26

Gruber et al results

Answer 26

• Memory: ppts recalled significantly more answers to high-curiosity questions compared to low-curiosity questions.
• In the nucleus accumbens, significant Curiosity × Memory interactions were observed - activity during anticipation predicted later memory for high curiosity.
• Activity in the VTA was predictive of successful memory formation in both curiosity conditions
• Incidental learning of faces: prediction = neural processed that are elicited by the presentation of a high curiosity question would enhance incidental learning of faces
• Consistent with this prediction, recognition performance was higher for faces that were encoded during states of high curiosity than low curiosity

Question 27

Gruber et al conclusions:

Answer 27

• Behavioral results from two studies revealed that states of high curiosity enhance not only learning of interesting information, but also learning of incidental material.
• Imaging results demonstrated that these learning benefits are related to anticipatory brain activity in the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit including the hippocampus.
• In particular, curiosity-driven memory benefits for incidental material were supported by activity in the SN/VTA and the hippocampus and by increased midbrain-hippocampus functional connectivity.
• Importantly, the effects of curiosity on memory for incidental material were correlated with activity in the SN/VTA prior to the encoding event, accounting for more than half of the behavioral variance in incidental encoding during high-curiosity states.
• These findings are consistent with the idea that curiosity enhances learning, at least in part, through increased dopaminergic modulation of hippocampal activity.

Question 28

Lau et al journal club paper aim:

Answer 28

Examined the neural underpinnings of motivational effect n curiosity
Assessed whether / how people are willing to subject themselves to risk to satisfy their curiosity for trivial, inconsequential knowledge

Question 29

Lau et al method:

Answer 29

2 conditions:
Curiosity: ppts saw a curiosity-stimulating stimulus followed by a wheel of fortune that depicted the probability of winning a lottery in each trial

Ps then had to make a decision to see if they would gamble on the lottery (risking an electric shock) to have a change to learn the solution of the trick

Food: pictures of food - given the option to gamble for a chance to get the food

Question 30

Lau et al study results:

Answer 30

Higher probability of receiving shock = more likely to reject the gamble (shows the aversive stimuli was effective)

people are willing to gamble, subjective themselves to an electric shock to satisfy their curiosity for trivial knowledge

Question 31

lau et al neuroimaging

Answer 31

The motivated decision-making was supported by the striatal reward areas
- Activation in the ventral striatum in response to curiosity and hunger-evoking stimuli predicted the decision to accept the risky option through the activation of the dorsal striatum during the decision phase

Question 32

Lau et al conclusions:

Answer 32

• Results from ALL the studies show that:
  1. Both curiosity for inconsequential knowledge (magic tricks or trivia) and hunger for food prompted participants to subject themselves to physical risks
  2. This motivated decision-making was supported by the striatal reward areas
  ○ Activation in the ventral striatum in response to curiosity and hunger-evoking stimuli predicted the decision to accept the risky option through the activation of the dorsal striatum during the decision phase
• Consistent with the notion that incentive salience plays a role in impulsive behaviours caused by curiosity in a similar manner to that of extrinsic incentives (such as food)