The medial frontal cortex and adjacent orbitofrontal cortex have been the focus of
investigations of decision-making, behavioral flexibility, and social behavior. We review …

Decisions made by mammals and birds are often temporally extended. They require
planning and sampling of decision-relevant information. Our understanding of such decision …

Curiosity plays a fundamental role for learning and memory, but the neural mechanisms that
stimulate curiosity and its effect on memory are poorly understood. Accumulating evidence …

Vast amounts of personalized information are now available to individuals. A vital research
challenge is to establish how people decide what information they wish to obtain. Here, over …

Highlights•Curiosity is a powerful motivator of information-seeking behavior.•People risk
negative experiences to satisfy curiosity.•Empirical evidence reveals parallels between …

From an early age, children need to gather information to learn about their environment.
Deciding which knowledge to pursue can be difficult because information can serve several …

The brain mechanism for controlling continuous behavior in dynamic contexts must mediate
action selection and learning across many timescales, responding differentially to the level …

Humans and animals can be strongly motivated to seek information to resolve uncertainty
about rewards and punishments. In particular, despite its clinical and societal relevance …

Curiosity is often portrayed as a desirable feature of human faculty. However, curiosity may
come at a cost that sometimes puts people in harmful situations. Here, using a set of …

Highlights•Curiosity is multifaceted in nature.•The neural mechanisms of curiosity overlap
with those of reward motivation and learning.•We are curious about information that might …