States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning

This is the study that gives the neuroscientific evidence that curiosity isn't a soft feel-good topic but a measurable lever on memory. In the scanner it shows: when you're curious about an answer, you fire the same dopaminergic reward system as you do for money or food. And in that state the brain even holds on to things that have nothing to do with the question itself. Curiosity is a state — and that state changes how we learn.

An fMRI study. Participants read trivia questions and rated how curious they were about each answer. During the wait for the answer, an unrelated, neutral face was shown. A memory test followed — for the trivia answers and for the incidental faces alike. Brain activity was recorded throughout. That made it possible to separate what curiosity does to the thing you're chasing from what it does to whatever happens to turn up in the same moment.

High curiosity improved memory for the answer and for the incidental faces — alongside raised activity in the dopaminergic midbrain and the hippocampus. So curiosity reaches beyond the question itself: in a curious state you carry off the incidental too. For professional development that means making the state is not the nice extra, it's the actual work. Once it's there, the brain learns almost on its own — including things that were never on the agenda.