According to new research, published in the journal PNAS , the human brain really is hungry for information, and this hunger can translate into unhealthy behaviors given that we now have unlimited access to completely random information.
Curiosity killed the cat?
Although not exactly in the sense that this saying implies, the current compulsion to continually search for information can have negative effects.
As we greedily scroll through social media or peruse small, random articles on nothing in particular, we may be feeding the equivalent of empty calories to our brains.
In the study, two researchers, from the Helen Wills Institute of Neuroscience and the Haas School of Business, at the University of California, Berkeley (USA), found that the search for information accesses the same neural code as the search for money .
“For the brain, information is its own reward, regardless of whether it is useful,” says Ming Hsu, co-author of the work. “And just like our brains like the empty calories in junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful, which some may call idle curiosity.”
The work tried to answer two questions: can we reconcile the economic and psychological points of view of curiosity or why do people seek information? And what does curiosity look like inside the brain? “
For this purpose, the researchers began by performing functional MRI (fMRI) scans on a group of volunteers as they played a game in which they had to evaluate a series of lotteries and then make a decision., decide how much money they wanted to invest to discover more information about the odds of winning.
Some offered more valuable information, while others contained very little information. Most of the participants made logical choices,considering the economic value of the information in each one,that is, with a value referred to the amount of money that the information given could help them win in the game.
However, there was a catch.When the stakes were higher, participants’ curiosity about the information increased, even when that information was not useful for making gambling decisions.
Based on this observation, the researchers thought that the players’ behavior was likely explained by a combination of financial motivation and psychological drives (stimulated by curiosity). Thus, they suspected that people seek information not only because it has value and can bring benefits, but also because we simply want to know, regardless of whether we intend to use the information or whether it is useful at all. At the core of all this is the thrill of anticipation, the two authors note. “Anticipation serves to amplify how good or bad something seems, and the anticipation of a more pleasant reward makes the information seem even more valuable.“, explica Hsu.
Information overload is like junk food
When the researchers analyzed the nuclear magnetic resonance scans, they saw that access to information during game play activated the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, two regions involved in the brain’s reward circuitry.
These areas also respond to money, food, and recreational drugs, and produce dopamine, a hormone and chemical messenger that plays a key role in driving motivation.
The researchers also found that the brain appeared to use the same type of neural “code” when responding to amounts of money and information about the odds of winning at the game.
“We were able to demonstrate for the first time the existence of a common neural code for information and money, which opens the door to a number of interesting questions about how people consume and sometimes overconsume information,” says Hsu.
The fact that there is a common code for monetary value and information and that it activates the brain regions involved in the reward cycle could mean that people could actually become addicted to information. This could have implications as to why we consume excess information, for example, when we cannot stop checking the notifications of our mobiles.
“The way our brains respond to the anticipation of a pleasant reward is a major reason why people are susceptible to clicking,” Hsu notes.
Whereas, throughout the past, the human race avidly searched for information to maximize the chances of survival, easy access to useless information can lead to overload.
Referencia: Common neural code for reward and information value. Kenji Kobayashi and Ming Hsu. PNAS June 25, 2019 116 (26) 13061-13066; first published June 11, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820145116 Edited by Terrence J. Sejnowski, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, CA, and approved May 20, 2019
