ArticleCurrent opinion in behavioral sciences2020
Neural circuitry of information seeking.
Article in Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- Representations of the intrinsic value of information in mouse orbitofrontal cortex.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Interpretable abstractions of artificial neural networks predict behavior and neural activity during human information gathering.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Prediction error correlates in the striosome-dopamine circuit emerge from information gain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Disinformation elicits learning biases.eLife · 2026Article
- Why do we seek information about the future? On the origins of subjective value without instrumental value.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Freely foraging macaques value information in ambiguous terrains.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Motivation, attention, and uncertainty: insights from animal and human research and implications for addiction.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Associations Between Generative AI Use and Facial Expression-Derived Central Executive Network Indices: A Pilot Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Active disambiguation guides inferring controllability and cause in social interactions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Do goldfish like to be informed?Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A Common Stay-on-Goal Mechanism in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex for Information and Effort Choices.eNeuro · 2025Article
- To know or not to know? Curiosity and the value of prospective information in animals.Learning & behavior · 2025Review
- Chimpanzees adapt their exploration to key properties of the environment.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A distributed subcortical circuit linked to instrumental information-seeking about threat.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Fluctuations in Sequential Many-Alternative Decisions Reveal Strategies Beyond Immediate Reward Maximisation.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- Flight training and the anterior cingulate cortex.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Temporal context effects on suboptimal choice.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Article
- Noradrenergic alpha-2a receptor stimulation enhances prediction error signaling and updating of attention sets in anterior cingulate cortex and striatum.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Individual differences in information demand have a low dimensional structure predicted by some curiosity traits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The causal structure and computational value of narratives.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2024Review
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
Humans and animals navigate uncertain environments by seeking information about the future. Remarkably, we often seek information even when it has no instrumental value for aiding our decisions - as if the information is a source of value in its own right. In recent years, there has been a flourishing of research into these non-instrumental information preferences and their implementation in the brain. Individuals value information about uncertain future rewards, and do so for multiple reasons, including valuing resolution of uncertainty and overweighting desirable information. The brain motivates this information seeking by tapping into some of the same circuitry as primary rewards like food and water. However, it also employs cortex and basal ganglia circuitry that predicts and values information as distinct from primary reward. Uncovering how these circuits cooperate will be fundamental to understanding information seeking and motivated behavior as a whole, in our increasingly complex and information-rich world.
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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.