Curiosity as the impulse to know: common behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying curiosity and impulsivity (vol 35, pg 92, 2020)

Curiosity is critical to learning and generally seen as a highly desirable quality, while impulsivity is generally seen as maladaptive and is associated with deleterious outcomes. The differing views of these constructs present somewhat of a paradox, as curiosity and impulsivity share remarkable overlaps, both in terms of the way they are measured behaviorally and in terms of their underlying neural substrates. Here, we review the burgeoning research into curiosity and highlight the ways in which many of the behavioral measures of curiosity rely on time and the impulsive need to know, right now, and without delay. While our understanding of the neural basis of curiosity is still developing, we discuss growing evidence supporting the importance of frontostriatal circuits and their dopaminergic inputs from the midbrain, areas that are critical to impulsivity and reward processing more generally. The commonalities between impulsivity and curiosity offer fertile ground for future research into the developmental time course of both constructs and the ways they are influenced by sociocultural context, experimental parameters, neurological conditions, and behavioral interventions. Finally, we discuss the implications of this somewhat paradoxical relationship for current educational and cultural trends that tend to dampen impulsivity, perhaps thereby inadvertently discouraging curiosity.