By ETHAN TAYLOR
Sheridan High School Student
Editor’s Note: The Sheridan Student Column is brought to readers by Sheridan High School’s 10th grade English class, taught by Abby Williams.
For my column, I was pondering over topics I could write about. I was considering maybe track or psychology during my study hall. While I was thinking of topics I could use to write about, I was simultaneously going through my fellow students’ columns to gather a sense of how to format it.
Then I stumbled upon my teacher’s column, in which she was talking about why we as people can never understand what someone’s going through. It led me to question why we have to understand and what the purpose is of us feeling the need to know; and to a broader question, why we have to ask questions and why we need the answers for them.
My curiosity in neurotransmitters, as well as the brain itself, helped lead me to research it in a deeper manner. It helped me in my search of understanding my neurodevelopmental disorder, as well as overall helping my curiosity toward understanding the brain. So the question about questions stuck with me, and with the many studies as to why we ask questions, it is a promising thing to write about. Usually, we ask questions to solve something or to better increase the current amount of information we have to help us understand something. Naturally, our curiosity tends to lead us into searching to find the answers to the questions we have.
Many neuroscientists, like Marieke Jepma, have done experiments in search of understanding curiosity in humans. According to Psychology Today, Marieke has done experiments that have “used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural underpinnings of curiosity – which parts of the brain are activated when perceptual or epistemic curiosity are induced and relieved.”
In this experiment the researchers found that “the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex” were parts of the brain that gave an “itch”-like feeling when more information was required in order to understand, which in response helped the person obtain more motivation toward getting the answer.
But in another experiment, done by researchers Min Jeong Kang and Colin Camerer, along with their collaborators, they reviewed another type of curiosity. For their experiment, they used trivia questions to stimulate different parts of the brain, by asking the subjects a series of questions.
For instance, they asked the participants, “What instrument sounds most like a human?” as well as “What galaxy is Earth located in?” Psychology Today explains what they did: They “generated epistemic curiosity by asking their subjects trivia questions.” Through this experiment the information that Kang and his colleagues took from their data concluded that the experiment “involved epistemic curiosity, on the other hand, the brain areas that were significantly energized (the left caudate and the lateral prefrontal cortex) were those known to be associated with anticipation of reward.”
The anticipation of reward can somewhat be explained by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is known as the reward neurotransmitter. It can give us the motivation to want to learn and understand more, and in doing so get us to ask more questions. With the positive feeling people get after finding the answer to their question, it’s no surprise it helps motivate us to ask more questions.
Overall it may be that we get an “itch” and feel the need to know the answer, or we need the information to help us. It could be dopamine, the neurotransmitter which helps us gain the motivation to find the answer. Regardless of the answer, to ask a question is to seek the answers, and we’re constantly trying for one to receive the other.
Whether you look at the amazing neuroscientists that did these experiments, or the everyday questions we all have, it’s certain that asking questions is part of our nature.
When you need an answer to a question yet it cannot be answered, you can have faith in God.