Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Maindy Road, Cardiff CF24 4HQ, Wales, UK.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2023 Feb 23;18(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsac050.
Curiosity reflects an individual's intrinsic motivation to seek information in order to close information gaps. In laboratory-based experiments, both curiosity and information seeking have been associated with enhanced neural dynamics in the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit. However, it is unclear whether curiosity and dopaminergic dynamics drive information seeking in real life. We investigated (i) whether curiosity predicts different characteristics of real-life information seeking and (ii) whether functional connectivity within the mesolimbic dopaminergic circuit is associated with information seeking outside the laboratory. Up to 15 months before the COVID-19 pandemic, curiosity and anxiety questionnaires and a 10-minute resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging session were conducted. In a follow-up survey early during the COVID-19 pandemic, participants repeated the questionnaires and completed an additional questionnaire about their COVID-19-related information seeking. Individual differences in curiosity but not anxiety were positively associated with the frequency of information-seeking behaviour. Additionally, the frequency of information seeking was predicted by individual differences in resting-state functional connectivity between the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens. The present translational study paves the way for future studies on the role of curiosity in real-life information seeking by showing that both curiosity and the mesolimbic dopaminergic functional network support real-life information-seeking behaviour.
好奇心反映了个体内在的动机，即寻求信息以填补信息空白。在基于实验室的实验中，好奇心和信息寻求都与中脑边缘多巴胺能回路中的增强的神经动力学有关。然而，尚不清楚好奇心和多巴胺能动力学是否在现实生活中驱动信息寻求。我们研究了：（i）好奇心是否可以预测现实生活中信息寻求的不同特征；（ii）中脑边缘多巴胺能回路中的功能连接是否与实验室外的信息寻求有关。在 COVID-19 大流行之前的 15 个月左右，进行了好奇心和焦虑问卷以及 10 分钟的静息态功能磁共振成像会话。在 COVID-19 大流行早期的后续调查中，参与者重复了问卷，并完成了一份关于他们 COVID-19 相关信息寻求的额外问卷。好奇心的个体差异而不是焦虑与信息寻求行为的频率呈正相关。此外，信息寻求的频率可以通过腹侧被盖区和伏隔核之间的静息态功能连接的个体差异来预测。本转化研究通过表明好奇心和中脑边缘多巴胺能功能网络都支持现实生活中的信息寻求行为，为未来研究好奇心在现实生活中的信息寻求中的作用铺平了道路。
