What’s Going on Inside the Brain Of A Curious Child?
Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset on YouTube as part of a physics lesson on motion.
Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. That’s something any good teacher lives for. And at the heart of it all is curiosity.
But why? What, exactly, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the October issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that the brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information.
Participants rated each question in terms of how curious they were about the answer.
Next, everyone reviewed the questions — and their answers — while the researchers monitored their brain activity using an MRI machine. When the participants’ curiosity was piqued, the parts of their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the hippocampus, which is involved in the creation of memories.
Indeed, when the researchers later tested participants on what they learned, those who were more curious were more likely to remember the right answers.
There was one more twist in Ranganath’s study: Throughout the experiment, the researchers flashed photos of random faces, without giving the participants any explanation as to why.
Those whose curiosity was already piqued were also the best at remembering these faces.
The researchers were surprised to learn that curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand, but also other stuff — even incidental, boring information.
This is a phenomenon teachers can use to their advantage in the classroom, says Evie Malaia, an assistant professor at the Southwest Center for Mind, Brain and Education at the University of Texas at Arlington.
At the end of the class, students may remember the answer to the word problem, but they’ll also remember how they found the answer through multiplication.
Researchers don’t know, for example, why exactly we get such a high off of learning, through Ranganath says it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. “We might have a basic drive in our brain to fight uncertainty,” he says. The more we know about the world, the more likely we are to survive its many perils.
Scientists are also trying to figure out how long the effects of curiosity last — if a kid’s curiosity is piqued at the beginning of the school day, will she be good at absorbing knowledge all day long? Or will she lose interest?
What Ranganath wants to know most is why some people seem naturally more curious than others. Lots of factors, including stress, aging and certain drugs can affect dopamine processing in the brain, he says. Genetic factors may also influence how inquisitive we are.
What’s Going on Inside the Brain Of A Curious Child?
Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset on YouTube as part of a physics lesson on motion.
Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. That’s something any good teacher lives for. And at the heart of it all is curiosity.
But why? What, exactly, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the October issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that the brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information.
Participants rated each question in terms of how curious they were about the answer.
Next, everyone reviewed the questions — and their answers — while the researchers monitored their brain activity using an MRI machine. When the participants’ curiosity was piqued, the parts of their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the hippocampus, which is involved in the creation of memories.
Indeed, when the researchers later tested participants on what they learned, those who were more curious were more likely to remember the right answers.
There was one more twist in Ranganath’s study: Throughout the experiment, the researchers flashed photos of random faces, without giving the participants any explanation as to why.
Those whose curiosity was already piqued were also the best at remembering these faces.
The researchers were surprised to learn that curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand, but also other stuff — even incidental, boring information.
This is a phenomenon teachers can use to their advantage in the classroom, says Evie Malaia, an assistant professor at the Southwest Center for Mind, Brain and Education at the University of Texas at Arlington.
At the end of the class, students may remember the answer to the word problem, but they’ll also remember how they found the answer through multiplication.
Researchers don’t know, for example, why exactly we get such a high off of learning, through Ranganath says it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. “We might have a basic drive in our brain to fight uncertainty,” he says. The more we know about the world, the more likely we are to survive its many perils.
Scientists are also trying to figure out how long the effects of curiosity last — if a kid’s curiosity is piqued at the beginning of the school day, will she be good at absorbing knowledge all day long? Or will she lose interest?
What Ranganath wants to know most is why some people seem naturally more curious than others. Lots of factors, including stress, aging and certain drugs can affect dopamine processing in the brain, he says. Genetic factors may also influence how inquisitive we are.
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