Immense amounts of information are now accessible to people, including information that
bears on their past, present and future. An important research challenge is to determine how …

Goals play a central role in human cognition. However, computational theories of learning
and decision-making often take goals as given. Here, we review key empirical findings …

Consider the range of social behaviours we engage in every day. In each case, there are a
multitude of unknowns, reflecting the many sources of uncertainty inherent to social …

Vast amounts of personalized information are now available to individuals. A vital research
challenge is to establish how people decide what information they wish to obtain. Here, over …

Curiosity plays a fundamental role for learning and memory, but the neural mechanisms that
stimulate curiosity and its effect on memory are poorly understood. Accumulating evidence …

From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment.
Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several …

Previous studies suggested roles for curiosity and interest in knowledge acquisition and
exploration, but there has been a long-standing debate about how to define these concepts …

Curiosity, creativity, and aesthetics are typically studied separately. The extent to which they
share psychological and neural mechanisms is not well understood, despite all being linked …

Highlights•Curiosity is a powerful motivator of information-seeking behavior.•People risk
negative experiences to satisfy curiosity.•Empirical evidence reveals parallels between …

Behavioral and economic theory dictate that we decide between options based on their
values. However, humans and animals eagerly seek information about uncertain future …