Curiosity And Hunger Share Brain Regions

Curiosity and hunger share brain regions. This is a fascinating fact, because they define two basic human needs and because both guarantee survival. One encourages us to look for food, and the other for knowledge to better adapt to difficulties and progress.

Albert Einstein said that curiosity has its own reason to exist. Few things are more important than questioning everything we see. Going beyond the apparent, questioning ourselves, exploring and looking at the world with the passion, interest and naughty innocence of a child is something extraordinary.

It is no accident that  both humans and animals have this inquisitive disposition. The desire to discover is as decisive as the need to feel hungry. In fact, both dimensions act as impulses that guide behavior, guarantee existence and also favor us to continue living in increasingly complex environments.

What would we be without that physiological need that makes our stomach rumble and makes us look for something to eat? Obviously, we would die. We also die without that impulse that makes us look through the keyhole, that wonders how to cure certain diseases and what research we should start doing…

Why do curiosity and hunger share brain regions?

The discovery is recent. It was in this same year that a team of neuroscientists from the University of Reading (UK) showed through a study that, in fact,  curiosity and hunger share brain regions.

Despite this, there were already suspicions. Both dimensions are two great drivers of motivation. Something that is often said is that hunger, for example, is capable of taking us to extreme situations to get food. Curiosity, although it may surprise us, has also led human beings to cross unimaginable borders to accumulate knowledge, discover other scenarios and position themselves as the most advanced being on this planet.

Chance? Maybe not. It is quite possible that, in the depths of this brain engineering, hunger and curiosity depart from common mechanisms to achieve the same end: subsistence. After all, curiosity drives movement, action and, above all, going beyond the comfort zone to discover what’s on the other side.

Something like this helped us in the past to become explorers, beings capable of crossing new territories to discover better resources to survive and prosper. Consider, for example, prehistoric human migrations and what they did to humanity.

This discovery by cognitive neuroscientist Johnny King Lau and his team only confirmed something that was already felt…

The nucleus accumbens, center of hunger and curiosity

We know that while curiosity and hunger share brain regions, the second dimension is a little more complex. The feeling of hunger is a very powerful instinct  that is activated when the brain detects a series of changes in the levels of hormones and nutrients in the blood.

Now, the team of scientists at the University of Reading, responsible for this study, has detected an interesting phenomenon from the use of magnetic resonance imaging. When curiosity is “turned on” and when an empty stomach alerts us that we are hungry, the same region of the brain is activated: the nucleus accumbens. Likewise, other areas, such as the bilateral caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area, also increase their activity.

And what specifically do these brain areas do? In fact, these areas orchestrate behaviors aimed at processing rewards. That is, they encourage us to implement actions that allow us to receive something gratifying.

In the case of hunger, what we get in return when we act is food (nutrients), the pleasure of enjoying a good meal and continuing to survive. When it comes to curiosity, we gain insights, discoveries and new ways to satisfy our well-being in infinite ways.

Share brain regions to keep us motivated

Curiosity and the desire for information is a psychological phenomenon that has aroused the interest of some of the greatest names in the history of psychology, such as William James, Ivan Pavlov, Frederic Skinner…

Thus, if curiosity and hunger share regions, it is because they have a lot to do with motivation. While the one seems to us a sign of intelligence and rationality (curiosity), the second seems to us little more than a primary instinct (hunger), yet both are essential and decisive.

In fact, loss of curiosity is associated with depression, while lack of hunger is associated with illness. Without them we are nothing, and as William James said, ” the desire to understand what we don’t know keeps us alive,  because curiosity is also another indispensable form of nourishment.”

Let’s stimulate this impulse, feed it every day to keep us alive in body and intelligence, in health and in the hope of progressing, of advancing beyond any limit and challenge. Curiosity and hunger are two indispensable instincts for most living beings.