States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit
Gruber, Gelman and Ranganath had adult volunteers rate their curiosity about trivia questions, then scanned them with fMRI while they waited for each answer, with unrelated faces shown during the wait. Memory was tested soon after the scan and a day later. The abstract reports that answers to high-curiosity questions and faces seen during high-curiosity states were remembered better, that midbrain and nucleus accumbens activity was higher in high-curiosity states, that individual differences in the memory benefit for faces were linked to midbrain and hippocampus activity and connectivity before the answer appeared, and that the authors conclude curiosity engages mechanisms overlapping with extrinsic reward motivation. The abstract does not give the number of participants.
Gruber, Gelman and Ranganath had adult volunteers rate their curiosity about trivia questions, then scanned them with fMRI while they waited for each answer, with unrelated faces shown during the wait. Memory was tested soon after the scan and a day later. The abstract reports that answers to high-curiosity questions and faces seen during high-curiosity states were remembered better, that midbrain and nucleus accumbens activity was higher in high-curiosity states, that individual differences in the memory benefit for faces were linked to midbrain and hippocampus activity and connectivity before the answer appeared, and that the authors conclude curiosity engages mechanisms overlapping with extrinsic reward motivation. The abstract does not give the number of participants.
Written from the abstract, PubMed record (PMID 25284006) and Crossref record, 2026-11-02.
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Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486-496. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.08.060 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.08.060