Curiosity and Reward as Motivational Drivers in Learning

Your mental state before and after learning plays a critical role in how well your remember something. This may seem obvious, but scientists are only just uncovering the neural processes underpinning this effect. At the CNS meeting today, Matthias Gruber of Cardiff University discussed two important mental states: when receiving reward and when curious. Recent studies have shown that both states of reward and curiosity lead to brain activity that boosts our memory, and rest after learning also helps.

In one study, Gruber and colleagues scanned participants in an fMRI machine while they were making decisions about objects, like “Which of these objects is heavier than a basketball?” and then being shown stuff like a penguin. For each correct answer, they received notification of a reward. They were not specifically asked to remember those objects. The participants then had a 10-minute rest period in the scanner, followed by a surprise memory task on the objects.

The researchers found that participants better remembered objects shown during the high-reward context than in the low-reward context.

The researchers also found reactivation in the hippocampus predicted those who benefited from the high-reward context for remembering.

Additionally, the researchers introduced for some a distractor task during the “rest period” – a math test. Those who did the math test did not get the memory benefit.

In another set of studies, Gruber and colleagues examined the role of curiosity in learning. They induced curiosity through anticipation of answers to interesting questions and then showed pictures of faces during the anticipation. Incidental memory of the faces was highest during the state of anticipation with increases in activity in the nucleus accumbens and SN/VTA areas of the brain.

So all you parents and students take note: Stuff like curiosity before learning and rest after learning can boost memory.

-Lisa M.P. Munoz