ArticleScientific reports2020
Choosing to view morbid information involves reward circuitry.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Out of the dark - Psychological perspectives on people's fascination with true crime.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Role of the striatum in counterfactual information seeking.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Article
- An Integrative Appraisal Model of Epistemic Curiosity.Affective science · 2025Review
- Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Characterization of neuronal oscillations in the prelimbic cortex, nucleus accumbens and CA1 hippocampus during object retrieval task in rats predisposed to early life stress.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2024Article
- Curiosity Satisfaction Increases Event-related Potentials Sensitive to Reward.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Uncertainty drives exploration of negative information across younger and older adults.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Motivations underlying self-infliction of pain during thinking for pleasure.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Interactions between ventrolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex during learning and behavioural change.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Review
- A prefrontal network integrates preferences for advance information about uncertain rewards and punishments.Neuron · 2021Article
- Curiosity in childhood and adolescence - what can we learn from the brain.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2021Review
- The Amsterdam Open MRI Collection, a set of multimodal MRI datasets for individual difference analyses.Scientific data · 2021Article
- States of curiosity and interest enhance memory differently in adolescents and in children.Developmental science · 2021Article
- How Curiosity Enhances Hippocampus-Dependent Memory: The Prediction, Appraisal, Curiosity, and Exploration (PACE) Framework.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2019Review
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
People often seek out stories, videos or images that detail death, violence or harm. Considering the ubiquity of this behavior, it is surprising that we know very little about the neural circuits involved in choosing negative information. Using fMRI, the present study shows that choosing intensely negative stimuli engages similar brain regions as those that support extrinsic incentives and "regular" curiosity. Participants made choices to view negative and positive images, based on negative (e.g., a soldier kicks a civilian against his head) and positive (e.g., children throw flower petals at a wedding) verbal cues. We hypothesized that the conflicting, but relatively informative act of choosing to view a negative image, resulted in stronger activation of reward circuitry as opposed to the relatively uncomplicated act of choosing to view a positive stimulus. Indeed, as preregistered, we found that choosing negative cues was associated with activation of the striatum, inferior frontal gyrus, anterior insula, and anterior cingulate cortex, both when contrasting against a passive viewing condition, and when contrasting against positive cues. These findings nuance models of decision-making, valuation and curiosity, and are an important starting point when considering the value of seeking out negative content.
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