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Neural Correlates of Curiosity: A Scoping Review

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Sarah Wene¹ (), Cassandra Ivie¹, Kou Murayama², Emily Peterson¹; ¹American University, ²University of Tübingen

Curiosity is a strong motivator that drives learning through cultivating a desire for knowledge. It is hypothesized that curiosity functions as a reward and activates brain areas implicated in reward processing. However, the extent to which this finding holds across studies with various tasks and samples is unknown as there is no systematic synthesis on the neural correlates of curiosity. We conducted a scoping review to examine how neuroimaging studies measure curiosity and what neural mechanisms are implicated in curiosity. In total, 1354 abstracts were screened, 55 articles went through full-text review, and 35 articles (11 EEG, 6 MRI, and 20 fMRI) met the criteria for inclusion. Across neuroimaging modalities, 58% of studies included trait curiosity measures and 44% included state curiosity measures. Trivia was the most common task used to study state curiosity (n=12), while other tasks included magic tricks, gambling, and distorted images. In task-based fMRI studies, areas of salience, higher order thinking, and reward networks were most commonly implicated in curiosity. These included the prefrontal cortex, frontal gyrus, cingulate, insula, striatum, and the parahippocampal gyrus as the most commonly reported areas of activation. The strong prevalence of higher order thinking and salience regions with more limited findings from the reward circuit suggests that perception and attention may have a more prominent role in curiosity than once previously thought. Results from this scoping review increase understanding of how the brain generates and experiences curiosity, supporting the development and refinement of motivation theories.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions