Sidra Jabeen7 months ago

Brain Mechanism of Curiosity Unraveled

Curiosity, hunger and appetitive aggression drive three different goal-directed behaviors: novelty seeking, food eating and hunting. In animals these behaviors are composed of similar actions. This similarity of actions has made it challenging to study novelty seeking in inarticulate animals and distinguish it from eating and hunting. Researcher Mehran Ahmadlou explains: “By increasing brain activity in a specific brain region, the Zona Incerta, interaction with conspecifics and novel objects compared to familiar objects and food increased. When we inactivated the cells in this region, depth and duration of investigation decreased”.