ReviewNature reviews. Neuroscience2018
Towards a neuroscience of active sampling and curiosity.
Review in Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 144 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
144 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Cortical Activation During Finger Tapping Task Performance in Parkinson's Disease Is Influenced by Priming Conditions: An ALE Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Why do we seek information about the future? On the origins of subjective value without instrumental value.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Decision-making trades off learned and perceived information.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Exerting effort for non-instrumental information under risk.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Deciding for others alters metacognition leading to responsibility aversion.Science advances · 2026Article
- Narrative context shifts gaze from visual to semantic salience.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Competing cognitive pressures on human exploration in the absence of trade-off with exploitation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Modeling information demand in the framework of probabilistic reasoning.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Feedback-induced attitudinal changes in risk preferences.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Role of spinal sensorimotor circuits in triphasic muscle command: a simulation approach using goal exploration process.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Habit learning is associated with efficiently controlled network dynamics in naive macaque monkeys.Npj complexity · 2026Article
- Eye movements during free viewing to maximize scene understanding.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Decision, Inference, and Information: Formal Equivalences Under Active Inference.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Human infants appreciate that information bears value for other individuals.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- An Integrative Appraisal Model of Epistemic Curiosity.Affective science · 2025Review
- Computational Approaches Reveal Developmental Shifts in Exploratory Play.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Discovering sensorimotor agency in cellular automata using diversity search.Science advances · 2025Article
- Decision-making trades off learned and perceived information.Research square · 2025Article
- Information sampling and Bayesian belief formation in statistical judgment.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
84 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In natural behaviour, animals actively interrogate their environments using endogenously generated 'question-and-answer' strategies. However, in laboratory settings participants typically engage with externally imposed stimuli and tasks, and the mechanisms of active sampling remain poorly understood. We review a nascent neuroscientific literature that examines active-sampling policies and their relation to attention and curiosity. We distinguish between information sampling, in which organisms reduce uncertainty relevant to a familiar task, and information search, in which they investigate in an open-ended fashion to discover new tasks. We review evidence that both sampling and search depend on individual preferences over cognitive states, including attitudes towards uncertainty, learning progress and types of information. We propose that, although these preferences are non-instrumental and can on occasion interfere with external goals, they are important heuristics that allow organisms to cope with the high complexity of both sampling and search, and generate curiosity-driven investigations in large, open environments in which rewards are sparse and ex ante unknown.
Indexed as
Identifiers
30397322What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.