Consider a study at the University of California at Davis in 2014. The researchers first asked each participant to rate their curiosity about learning the answers to a series of questions, such as “Who was the president of the United States when Uncle Sam first got his beard?” or “What does the term ‘dinosaur’ actually mean?” The participants then lay in an fMRI brain scanner while the same questions were presented, followed shortly after by the answers. The participants were then tested on their recollection of the facts an hour later.
