Brain region for adventurousness reported found

Sci­en­tists have iden­ti­fied a brain re­gion that they say en­cour­ages us to seek ad­ven­ture.

Lo­cat­ed in a prim­i­tive part of the brain, it’s ac­ti­vat­ed when we choose un­fa­mil­iar op­tions, the re­search­ers said. This sug­gests try­ing out the un­known of­fered ad­van­tages to our ev­o­lu­tion­ary an­ces­tors, they added.

It may al­so ex­plain, they went on, why re-branding of fa­mil­iar prod­ucts en­cour­ages to pick them off the su­per­mar­ket shelves.

Re­search­ers showed vol­un­teers a se­lec­tion of cards, each with an im­age the vol­un­teers had al­ready seen. Each im­age was as­so­ci­at­ed with a spe­cif­ic chance of a re­ward.

Par­ti­ci­pants were al­lowed to choose some im­ages over oth­ers in hopes of the prizes. As the game went on, the play­ers could al­so fig­ure out which choice would pro­vide the high­est re­wards.

But when un­fa­mil­iar im­ages were in­tro­duced, the re­search­ers found vol­un­teers were more likely to take a chance and pick one of these than go on with fa­mil­iar—and ar­guably safer—op­tions.

Bian­ca Witt­mann of Uni­ver­s­ity Col­lege Lon­don and col­leagues used brain scan­ners that mea­s­ure blood flow in the brain to high­light which brain ar­eas were most ac­tive dur­ing the game. They found that when the sub­jects chose a new op­tion, an ar­ea of the brain known as the ven­tral stria­tum lit up.

The prim­i­ti­vity of this brain re­gion sug­gests ad­ven­ture-seek­ing is com­mon to creat­ures rang­ing from hu­mans to sim­pler an­i­mals, Witt­man ar­gued.

“Seek­ing new and un­fa­mil­iar ex­pe­ri­ences is a fun­da­men­tal be­hav­iour­al ten­den­cy,” she said. “It makes sense to try new op­tions as they may prove ad­van­ta­geous in the long run. For ex­am­ple, a mon­key who chooses to de­vi­ate from its di­et of ba­na­nas, even if this in­volves mov­ing to an un­fa­mil­iar part of the for­est and eat­ing a new type of food, may find its di­et en­riched.”

When we do some­thing that turns out to be ben­e­fi­cial, we’re re­warded with a flow of spe­cial neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, or sig­nal­ing chem­i­cals, in the brain that cre­ate a good feel­ing. A key neu­ro­trans­mit­ter as­so­ci­at­ed with re­ward is known as dopamine. The feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion en­cour­ages us to re­peat the ad­van­ta­geous be­hav­ior.

The ven­tral stria­tum is one of the key ar­eas in­volved in pro­cess­ing such re­wards, Witt­man and col­leagues said. Al­though the re­search­ers couldn’t tell from the scans how nov­el­ty seek­ing was be­ing re­warded, Witt­mann said it’s probably through do­pa­mine.

Our taste for ad­ven­ture may al­so make us vul­ner­a­ble to ex­ploita­t­ion, Witt­man warned. “I might have my own fa­vour­ite choice of choc­o­late ba­r, but if I see a dif­fer­ent ba­r re­pack­aged, ad­ver­tis­ing its ‘new, im­proved fla­vour,’ my search for nov­el ex­pe­ri­ences may en­cour­age me to move away from my usu­al choice,” said Witt­mann. This “old wine” in a new bot­tle syn­drome, she added, “is some­thing that mar­ket­ing de­part­ments take ad­van­tage of.”

Re­ward­ing the brain for nov­el choices could have a grim­mer side ef­fect, ar­gues Na­than­iel Daw, now of New York Uni­ver­s­ity, who al­so worked on the stu­dy. “In hu­mans, in­creased nov­el­ty-seek­ing may play a role in gam­bling and drug ad­dic­tion, both of which are me­di­at­ed by mal­func­tions in do­pa­mine re­lease.”

The re­search uti­lized the brain-scan­ning tech­nique known as func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance im­ag­ing, at the uni­ver­s­ity’s Well­come Trust Cen­tre for Neu­ro­im­ag­ing. The find­ings ap­pear in the June 25 is­sue of the re­search jour­nal Neu­ron.