How to Rekindle Curiosity
When we tailor problems to match our capacity, learning becomes a primal reward
Learning is a primal pleasure, and so is wanting to know. Curiosity correlates tightly with the dopamine brain circuit — the same circuit that fires in response to food, drugs, and sex. The more curious you are, the more those regions light up.
These neurobiological curiosity signals predict not only how much you learn, but what you retain. The more curious you are about something, the likelier you are to recall even incidental details linked to the information at hand. If you’re anticipating a tantalizing piece of gossip, for example, you’re more likely to remember what your source of information was wearing or the expression on their face. The degree of your craving for knowledge controls the strength of your memory.
Curiosity is a propulsive force that pushes animals to act, just like hunger, thirst, the need for security, or the desire to reproduce. But it’s also part of what makes humans, as a species, unique. Whereas other animals merely visit the physical space around them, we explore conceptual worlds. We rejoice, for example, in the symmetry and pure beauty of mathematical patterns. A clever theorem can move us much more than a piece of chocolate. And when we suddenly discover that one of our implicit…
