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Giant Brain Candy: Curiosity Makes Memories Stick. Curiosity engages the brain’s reward circuits and boosts memory: when people were curious about a question, they remembered its answer better, and even unrelated faces shown while they waited. Source: Curiosity, reward and memory.
Strong evidenceThe research
  1. Kang, M. J., Hsu, M., Krajbich, I. M., Loewenstein, G., McClure, S. M., Wang, J. T., & Camerer, C. F. (2009). The wick in the candle of learning: Epistemic curiosity activates reward circuitry and enhances memory. Psychological Science, 20(8), 963–973.
  2. 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.

Journey 7 · Uncertainty

Curiosity Makes Memories Stick

Curiosity engages the brain’s reward circuits and boosts memory: when people were curious about a question, they remembered its answer better, and even unrelated faces shown while they waited.

Source: Curiosity, reward and memory · Strong evidence

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