On October 2, Matthias Gruber, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, disclosed counter-intuitive links between curiosity and learning in his research, which was published online in Neuron, a neuroscience journal. The popular belief is that high curiosity leads to enhanced learning abilities, but the results also showed that the more curious participants were better able to learn completely unrelated information. Moreover, the team found out that the brain circuit that deals with reward and motivation as well as the hippocampus had increased activity when curiosity was aroused, a phenomenon responsible for the formation of new memories. The findings are expected to become useful for preventing neuro-degenerative diseases common to the elderly and sustain intellectual concentration in classrooms and in the workplace.

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