Curiosity Strengthen Human Memory: Research Shows

The recent study revealed that, the triggering of dopamine eventually resulted in the strengthening of our memory. Dopamine, a chemical produced when there is any activity going on in the brain. However, the researchers revealed that the students who are more curious about things happening around have more dopamine produced as compared to those who are bored most of the times. Moreover, the researchers told that, the stimulation of the students’ curiosity is quite useful for them to attain good grades.

The neuroscientists at the University of California told that, curiosity is similar to the gap. The wish to fill the gap can make students to find the desired answer, Chara Ranganath stated.

The researchers have gathered the study data from the college students by asking a series of trivia questions. Every question is rated by the students on the basis of their answers. Moreover, list of questions they were not sure with the answers were shown to them on a screen. At the same time as showing the questions and answers, an MRI was linked to the student’s brain in order to check brain activity.

According to the results of the MRI, when a student gets curious with the answer, the production of dopamine in the brain is higher. The MRI test displays that the curiosity has some neural conduit, which causes people to crave for a chocolate or to run to win a race.

Again after an hour, the students were given a test having same questions. The average true answers that they are more curious about are 35 out of 50 whereas for questions that they are not that curious is 27 out of 50. This directed to the researchers’ conclusion that when curiosity is irked, it actually enhances person’s memory.

On the other hand, after one day, the same series of questions were given to different set of students. The result was still the same showing that students got more correct answers to questions that they are more curious than questions that does not interest them much.