Brain separates valuable information from water rewards in mice

Often, humans and other animals seek information that can help them complete tasks and attain desired rewards. In some cases, however, they seek information driven simply by curiosity and a desire to obtain knowledge for its own sake, even if it does not lead to external rewards.

Researchers at Columbia University, Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins University recently created a new experimental paradigm for studying the neural processes associated with curiosity and the desire for knowledge in mice. This paradigm, outlined in a paper in Nature Neuroscience, allowed them to gain new insights into how the brain represents the value of information regardless of physical rewards.

“We wanted to understand the neural basis of our desire for knowledge—why we read books, explore, and have such a strong drive to find things out,” Jennifer J. Bussell, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “Earlier experiments had suggested that the brain responds to information as if it is a reward, to such an extent that even the exact same neurons in the brain’s reward centers respond to predictions of juice and information.”

Previous studies offered some initial clues about how the mammalian brain attributes value to information. However, the process through which it recognizes stimuli that can provide interesting information and represents their value has not yet been elucidated.

“This is a higher-order process of cognition, since what is most valuable as information depends on what we already know, and we can’t detect and know how good information is by physiological processes in our body, the way we can with food or many other better understood types of reward that motivate our actions,” Bussell said.

Studying the mouse brain during information seeking

Bussell and her colleagues created a new paradigm to observe neural processes in a living organism as it learns that something in its environment can give it information and assigns value to that information. The paradigm they developed was applied to mice, which are among the most studied animals in neuroscience because of the wealth of genetically targeted tools available for studying their brains.

“We offered thirsty mice the choice of poking their noses into two holes,” Bussell explained. “One hole revealed with a short puff of odor whether they would receive a water reward, and the other revealed nothing but, critically, offered them the exact same chance and amount of water. Prior to making their decision, the mice had to poke in a third hole that presented them with an odor that either directed them to the information- or non-information-providing hole or offered them the choice. In this way, the mice learned that individual odors each predicted a certain amount of information or water reward.”

Interestingly, the researchers observed that the mice predominantly preferred poking their noses into the hole that gave them information. This occurred even if the information-providing hole contained less water than the other hole. These findings suggest that mice are often willing to exchange water (i.e., a reward) for information. This, in turn, implies that the mice attribute value to the information itself.

How the mouse brain places value on knowing

As the mice were learning this behavioral task, the researchers recorded their brain activity using miniaturized microendoscopes. These are ultrathin, lightweight imaging devices that can measure activity in hundreds of neurons simultaneously. The team observed activation patterns in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a brain region involved in evaluating decisions guided by reward value.

“We chose to look at the orbitofrontal cortex because it has been shown to represent the value of options when humans and other animals are making decisions and previous experiments using mice had shown that it represents reward value that is signaled by odors in particular,” Bussell said.

To understand how the brain represents the prospect of obtaining information, the researchers compared cases in which, based on the odor they sniffed, the mice expected to receive information with trials in which the reward outcome would remain unknown.

“We identified a representation of the predicted value of information in the mouse orbitofrontal cortex,” Bussell said. “Approximately 20% of the cells in the OFC showed different neural activity in response to odors that predicted information versus those that predicted no information, and the magnitude of that activity difference scaled with the duration of time the mice had knowledge of the reward outcome. This indicates that we identified a representation of information value that depended on its resolution of uncertainty, which is intrinsic to information and cognition.”

The team’s findings suggest that the mouse brain processes a desire for knowledge and the drive for physiological rewards differently. Future studies could use similar paradigms to further explore the differences between these two distinct drives.

“The representation of the predicted value of information was discernible across the neural population in a way that was orthogonal to the representation of the predicted water value, which we observed in response to separate odors in our experiments,” Bussell explained. “Given that we observed this pattern in the OFC, a brain area intimately involved in generating representations of the world to guide decisions, the representation of information value could be a critical signal that allows animals to take actions to gain information and increase their knowledge of the world.”

Toward a better understanding of curiosity

Bussell and her colleagues are now planning new studies aimed at further exploring the neural processes underlying curiosity and the drive to seek knowledge, with the goal that their work will also be applicable to humans.

“We explicitly designed this task to mirror those used to study information seeking in humans and nonhuman primates, and we found that mice seemed to use strategies similar to ours in deciding whether to receive information,” Bussell added. “We are therefore really excited to use the tools of mouse neuroscience, such as manipulating specific neural activity and tracing circuit connections, to study the computations of information value.”

In the future, the researchers’ recent work and the paradigm they developed could help improve understanding of the underpinnings of curiosity and learning. This could, in turn, help improve educational strategies and interventions aimed at fostering curiosity in children.

“Understanding how we evaluate sources of information and how wanting to gain knowledge drives our behavior would have important implications for helping people navigate our information-rich modern world, including through learning during childhood development,” Bussell said. “Not only could a better understanding of curiosity, the drive to gain information, improve people’s success in learning, given the pleasurable, rewarding nature of acquiring knowledge, it could offer us access to more joy and fulfillment—something we all could use.”

Who’s behind this story?

Ingrid Fadelli

Freelance journalist with BSc Psychology and MA International Journalism. Covers AI, robotics, neuroscience, and astrophysics since 2018.

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