scholarly journals Induction and Relief of Curiosity Elicit Parietal and Frontal Activity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieke L. F. van Lieshout ◽  
Annelinde R. E. Vandenbroucke ◽  
Nils C. J. Müller ◽  
Roshan Cools ◽  
Floris P. de Lange
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Insular Cortex ◽  
Linear Increase ◽  
Expected Value ◽  
Information Uncertainty ◽  
World Model ◽  
Information Update ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
Types Of Information

AbstractCuriosity is a basic biological drive, but little is known about its behavioral and neural mechanisms. We can be curious about several types of information. On the one hand, curiosity is a function of the expected value of information, serving primarily to help us maximize reward. On the other hand, curiosity can be a function of the uncertainty of information, helping us to update what we know. In the current studies, we aimed to disentangle the contribution of information uncertainty and expected value of rewards to curiosity in humans of either sex. To this end, we designed a lottery task in which uncertainty and expected value of trial outcomes were manipulated independently, and examined how neural activity and behavioral measures of curiosity were modulated by these factors. Curiosity increased linearly with increased outcome uncertainty, both when curiosity was explicitly probed as well as when it was implicitly tested by people’s willingness to wait. Increased expected value, however, did not strongly relate to these curiosity measures. Neuroimaging results showed greater BOLD response with increasing outcome uncertainty in parietal cortex at the time of curiosity induction. Outcome updating when curiosity was relieved resulted in an increased signal in the insula, orbitofrontal cortex and parietal cortex. Furthermore, the insula showed a linear increase corresponding to the size of the information update. These results suggest that curiosity is monotonically related to the uncertainty about one’s current world model, the induction and relief of which are associated with activity in parietal and insular cortices respectively.Significance statementHumans are curious by nature. When you hear your phone beep, you probably feel the urge to check the message right away, even though the message itself likely doesn’t give you a direct reward. In this study, we demonstrated that curiosity can be driven by outcome uncertainty, irrespective of reward. The induction of curiosity was accompanied by increased activity in the parietal cortex, whereas the information update at the time of curiosity relief was associated with activity in insular cortex. These findings advance our understanding of the behavioral and neural underpinnings of curiosity, which lies at the core of human information-seeking and serves to optimize the individual’s current world-model.

scholarly journals Curiosity or savouring? Information seeking is modulated by both uncertainty and valence.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieke van Lieshout ◽  
Iris Traast ◽  
Floris de Lange ◽  
Roshan Cools
Keyword(s):  
Information Seeking ◽  
Negative Information ◽  
Expected Value ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Positive Information ◽  
World Model ◽  
Outcome Valence ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Uncertain Outcomes ◽  
Gains And Losses

Curiosity is pervasive in our everyday lives, but little is known about its underlying mechanisms. In the current study, we assessed whether curiosity about uncertain outcomes is modulated by the valence of the information, i.e. whether the information is good or bad news. Using a lottery task in which outcome uncertainty, expected value and outcome valence (gain versus loss) were manipulated independently, we found that curiosity is overall higher for gains compared with losses. Surprisingly, curiosity increased with increasing outcome uncertainty for both gains and losses, contradicting models that posit that humans seek positive and avoid negative information. Curiosity thus follows from multiple drives, including a drive to improve our world model, as well as, separately, a drive to maximize positive information.

The information needs and behaviour of the Egyptian elderly living in care homes: An exploratory study

IFLA Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 034003522199156
Author(s):  
Essam Mansour
Keyword(s):  
Elderly People ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Care Homes ◽  
Average Income ◽  
Information Awareness ◽  
Medical Health ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Elderly Living

The purpose of this study is to investigate the information-seeking behaviour of the Egyptian elderly, including their information needs. A sample of 63 elderly people living in care homes was taken. It was divided into five focus groups. Of the 63 elderly people, 40 were men (63.5%) and 23 women (36.5%). Almost half (47.6%) ranged in aged from 61 to 70. About a quarter (23%) of them held a high school diploma. The highest percentage (28.6%) was labelled as average-income people. The highest percentage (60.3%) was also found to be widows or widowers. The types of information used most by the Egyptian elderly related to physical, medical/health, social, rational and recreational needs. Their information sources varied between formal and informal sources. Nearly two-thirds (63.5%) of them showed that limited knowledge, lack of interest, poor information awareness, aging, loneliness and health problems were the most significant obstacles they faced when seeking information.

scholarly journals Investigating information-seeking behaviors of primary care physicians who care for older depressed patients and their family caregivers: a pilot study

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Jo Dorsey ◽  
Ellen Detlefsen
Keyword(s):  
Primary Care ◽  
Pilot Study ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Primary Care Physicians ◽  
Care Physician ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Depressed Patients ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Primary Care Practices ◽  
Information Seeking Behaviors

Objective – To describe preliminary findings from a study of information-seeking behaviors of primary care physicians who care for elderly and depressed patients, and the correlation between what is sought versus what is provided to the patient and (or) caregiver. Setting – Physicians in two large ambulatory primary care practices throughout urban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who take care of geriatric patients. Methods – Structured interviews, with common questions, will be conducted with 12 primary care physicians to determine patterns of information-seeking behaviors. Environmental scans of physicians' offices for evidence of their existing information behaviors will complement the information obtained from the interviews. Results – This pilot study provides an analysis of the resources primary care physicians use to seek information to provide to patients and caregivers. Analyses show types of information sought, time spent seeking information, and methods used to find information given to patients. Conclusions – With mounting evidence of the Internet being used for patient self care, it is essential to understand if primary care physicians understand the scope and breadth of information readily available to their patients. The primary care physician needs to be aware of the types of information made available to their patients and the caregivers who are inclined to obtain information for the patient.

scholarly journals Dynamical Latent State Computation in the Posterior Parietal Cortex

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaushik J Lakshminarasimhan ◽  
Eric Avila ◽  
Xaq Pitkow ◽  
Dora E Angelaki
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Posterior Parietal Cortex ◽  
Target Location ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
World Model ◽  
Population Activity ◽  
The World ◽  
Neural Interactions ◽  
Posterior Parietal ◽  
Hidden States

Success in many real-world tasks depends on our ability to dynamically track hidden states of the world. To understand the underlying neural computations, we recorded brain activity in posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of monkeys navigating by optic flow to a hidden target location within a virtual environment, without explicit position cues. In addition to sequential neural dynamics and strong interneuronal interactions, we found that the hidden state -- monkey's displacement from the goal -- was encoded in single neurons, and could be dynamically decoded from population activity. The decoded estimates predicted navigation performance on individual trials. Task manipulations that perturbed the world model induced substantial changes in neural interactions, and modified the neural representation of the hidden state, while representations of sensory and motor variables remained stable. The findings were recapitulated by a task-optimized recurrent neural network model, suggesting that neural interactions in PPC embody the world model to consolidate information and track task-relevant hidden states.

scholarly journals Share to Seek: The Effects of Disease Complexity on Health Information Seeking Behavior (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashwag Alasmari ◽  
Lina Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Health Information ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Mixed Data ◽  
Disease Development ◽  
Health Information Seeking ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Types Of Information

BACKGROUND Online Questioning and Answering (Q&A) sites have emerged as an alternative source for serving individuals’ health information needs. Despite the amount of studies concerning the analysis of user-generated content in online Q&A sites, there is an insufficient understanding of the effect of disease complexity on information seeking needs, and the types of information shared, and little research have been devoted to questions that involve multimorbidity. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate online sharing of health information at different levels of disease complexity. In particular, this study gains a deep insight into the effect of disease complexity in terms of information seeking needs, types of information shared, and stages of disease development. METHODS We first selected a random sample of 400 questions from each site. The data cleaning resulted in a final set of 624 questions, 316 questions from Yahoo Answers and 308 from WebMD Answers. We used a mixed data approach, including qualitative content analysis followed by statistical quantitative analysis. RESULTS The analysis of variance One Way ANOVA showed significant differences in the disease complexity (single versus multimorbid disease questions) only on two information seeking needs: diagnosis (F1, 622 =5.08, p=0.00), and treatment (F1, 622 =4.82, p=0.00). There were also statistically significant differences between the two levels of disease complexity when considering the stages of disease development, the general health stage (F1,622 =48.02, p=0.00) and chronic stage (F1,622 =54.01, p=0.00). Moreover, our findings showed significant differences among the two types of disease complexity on all types of shared information, demographic information (F1,622 =32.24, p=0.00), medical all (F1,622 = 16.75, p=0.00), medical diagnosis (F1,622 =11.04, p=0.00), as well as treatment and prevention (F1,622 =14.55, p=0.00). CONCLUSIONS The findings present implications for designing online Q&A sites to better support health information seeking. Future experimental studies should be conducted to verify these findings and provide effective health information from Q&A sites. CLINICALTRIAL

scholarly journals Patient preferences toward an interactive e-consent application for research using electronic health records

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A Harle ◽  
Elizabeth H Golembiewski ◽  
Kiarash P Rahmanian ◽  
Janice L Krieger ◽  
Dorothy Hagmajer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Patient Preferences ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Research Use ◽  
Health Record ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
Electronic Health ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Grounded Theory Approach

Abstract Objective The purpose of this study was to assess patient perceptions of using an interactive electronic consent (e-consent) application when deciding whether or not to grant broad consent for research use of their identifiable electronic health record (EHR) information. Materials and Methods For this qualitative study, we conducted a series of 42 think-aloud interviews with 32 adults. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. Results We identified themes related to patient preferences, reservations, and mixed attitudes toward consenting electronically; low- and high-information-seeking behavior; and an emphasis on reassuring information, such as data protections and prohibitions against sharing data with pharmaceutical companies. Participants expressed interest in the types of information contained in their EHRs, safeguards protecting EHR data, and specifics on studies that might use their EHR data. Discussion This study supports the potential value of interactive e-consent applications that allow patients to customize their consent experience. This study also highlights that some people have concerns about e-consent platforms and desire more detailed information about administrative processes and safeguards that protect EHR data used in research. Conclusion This study contributes new insights on how e-consent applications could be designed to ensure that patients’ information needs are met when seeking consent for research use of health record information. Also, this study offers a potential electronic approach to meeting the new Common Rule requirement that consent documents contain a “concise and focused” presentation of key information followed by more details.

An Analysis of Engineers Information Seeking Activity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Cash ◽  
Tino Stanković ◽  
Mario Štorga
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Visualization Technique ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Overall Performance ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Visual Network

Information seeking is an important part of the engineering design process. In this context the Internet has become a significant source of information, shaping the way engineers work and interact. Current work has focused on characterizing this activity in terms of total time allocated to different information sources or overall tasks, such as evaluating. However, these approaches do not give an understanding of how engineers information seeking affects their problem solving activity and ultimately their performance in the context of the design process. As such, a new approach is needed to decompose the complexity of information seeking activity in order to more effectively support the evolving needs of engineering designers and design researchers. This paper addresses these issues by using an experimental study and network visualization technique to analyze Internet based information seeking activity and its affect on engineers overall performance during the information seeking/feasibility stage of the design process. The study uses both final year trainee engineers and practicing engineers in order to more fully explore the different modes of information seeking activity. With the study complete, the visual network analysis is used to explore patterns of information seeking and other design activity. Based on the results, three clearly differentiated types of information seeking activity are identified and discussed.

scholarly journals Digital inequalities and social media: experiences of young people in Chile

2017 ◽  
Vol 118 (7/8) ◽  
pp. 372-384
Author(s):  
Sarah McNicol ◽  
Karine Aillerie
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Young People ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
School Students ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Types Of Information

Purpose This paper aims to report the findings from a survey of secondary school students in Chile by exploring their use of social networking services for information-seeking purposes. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was distributed via Chile’s Ministry of Education and 12,354 responses were received. Findings The results indicate that young people in Chile extensively use SNSs, but there are differences in the ways in which they use these services, specifically for information purposes. When considering school-related activities, there are differences in the use of SNSs by students in different types of schools. Those in academic-focussed institutions are more likely to use SNSs for school-related information purposes and are more likely to publish most types of information on SNSs than their counterparts in vocational schools. Research limitations/implications The sample was self-selecting and excluded students without online access to the survey. Practical implications The findings indicate more needs to be done in schools serving lower socio-economic communities to support students’ use of SNSs for information-seeking, especially for academic purposes. Social implications The findings suggest that school-associated social capital may have a role in shaping students’ use of SNSs for information and learning purposes and, potentially, in exacerbating digital inequalities. Originality/value The focus on the use of social media specifically for information-seeking distinguishes this research. The findings challenge possible assumptions about the links between social media use and social class and suggest that differences may be exacerbated by school practices.

Increased Response-time Variability is Associated with Reduced Inferior Parietal Activation during Episodic Recognition in Aging

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 779-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart W. S. MacDonald ◽  
Lars Nyberg ◽  
Johan Sandblom ◽  
Håkan Fischer ◽  
Lars Bäckman
Keyword(s):  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Blood Oxygenation ◽  
Time Variability ◽  
Behavioral Variability ◽  
Response Latencies ◽  
Oxygenation Level ◽  
Brain Correlates ◽  
Neural Underpinnings

Intraindividual variability (IIV) in cognitive performance shares systematic associations with aging-related processes, brain injury, and neurodegenerative pathology. However, little research has examined the neural underpinnings of IIV, with no studies investigating brain correlates of IIV in relation to retrieval success. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined links between IIV, recognition memory performance, and blood oxygenation level dependent activations. Nineteen older adults (70–79 years) were presented with 80 words at encoding, with brain scans and response latencies obtained during subsequent recognition. An index of IIV, the intraindividual standard deviation (ISD), was computed across successful latency trials. Decreasing ISDs were systematically associated with better recognition, faster latencies, and increased activation in the inferior parietal cortex (BA 40). Demonstrated links between less behavioral variability and parietal activations are consistent with the known importance of the parietal cortex for retrieval success. In support of extant findings and theory from neuroscience, neuropsychology, and cognitive aging, the present results suggest that behavioral IIV represents a proxy for neural integrity.

scholarly journals The value of what’s to come: neural mechanisms coupling prediction error and reward anticipation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiyohito Iigaya ◽  
Tobias U. Hauser ◽  
Zeb Kurth-Nelson ◽  
John P. O’Doherty ◽  
Peter Dayan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Functional Coupling ◽  
Hippocampal Activity ◽  
Neural Underpinnings ◽  
To Come ◽  
Human Participants

Having something to look forward to is a keystone of well-being. Anticipation of a future reward, like an upcoming vacation, can often be more gratifying than the very experience itself. Theories of anticipation have described how it induces behaviors ranging from beneficial information-seeking through to harmful addiction. However, it remains unclear how neural systems compute an attractive value from anticipation, instead of from the reward itself. To address this gap, we administered a decision-making task to human participants that allowed us to analyze brain activity during receipt of information predictive of future pleasant outcomes. Using a computational model of anticipatory value that captures participants’ decisions, we show that an anticipatory value signal is orchestrated by influences from three brain regions. Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) tracks the value of anticipation; dopaminergic midbrain responds to information that enhances anticipation, while sustained hippocampal activity provides a functional coupling between these regions. This coordinating function of the hippocampus is consistent with its known role in episodic future thinking. Our findings shed new light on the neural underpinnings of anticipation’s influence over decision-making, while also unifying a range of phenomena associated with risk and time-delay preference.

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