Source: Nilay pati via Wikimedia Commons

Resolving our curiosity is both something we’re willing to pay a cost for and that has a clear and understandable signature in the brain.

Curiosity has been said to be a form of intrinsically motivated search for information or knowledge. But how could we test this out?

What if you were shown a brief preview of an upcoming event, and you couldn’t in any way influence the outcome: would you be curious to know what happened? Would you be more curious if the preview was more ambiguous?

Five cognitive neuroscientists recently teamed up to tackle this question. The approach they used was at once surprisingly simple, and surprisingly elegant.

The preview image that the researchers used was a picture of a “lottery vase.” For example:

Source: W. Koutstaal based on van Lieshout et al, 2018

—> For more please see Wilma’s: “Why do you ask?”