Information is Like Crack Cocaine to our Brains

Guess what?  Checking your cell is like snorting crack cocaine.

Ok, maybe not quite that similar but a new study shows that information, to our brains, releases dopamine just like money or food. Or drugs.

According to newswise.com, a new study by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain's dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food.

“To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it's useful,” says Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, a neuroeconomist whose research employs functional magnetic imaging (fMRI), psychological theory, economic modeling, and machine learning, at the web site. "And just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful—what some may call idle curiosity."

Hsu found that the research demonstrates that the brain converts information into the same "common scale" as it does for money. "It also lays the groundwork for unraveling the neuroscience behind how we consume information—and perhaps even digital addiction," newswise reports.  “We were able to demonstrate for the first time the existence of a common neural code for information and money, which opens the door to a number of exciting questions about how people consume, and sometimes over-consume, information,” Hsu says.

His research is rooted in the study of curiosity and what it looks like inside the brain. "While economists have tended to view curiosity as a means to an end, valuable when it can help us get information to gain an edge in making decisions, psychologists have long seen curiosity as an innate motivation that can spur actions by itself," newswise points out. "For example, sports fans might check the odds on a game even if they have no intention of ever betting"

Sometimes, we want to know something, just to know.

“Our study tried to answer two questions. First, can we reconcile the economic and psychological views of curiosity, or why do people seek information? Second, what does curiosity look like inside the brain?” Hsu says.

To understand more about the neuroscience of curiosity, the researchers scanned the brains of people while they played a gambling game. Each participant was presented with a series of lotteries and needed to decide how much they were willing to pay to find out more about the odds of winning. In some lotteries, the information was valuable—for example, when what seemed like a longshot was revealed to be a sure thing. In other cases, the information wasn't worth much, such as when little was at stake.

For the most part, the study subjects made rational choices based on the economic value of the information (how much money it could help them win). But that didn't explain all their choices, according to newswise.com:

"People tended to over-value information in general, and particularly in higher-valued lotteries. It appeared that the higher stakes increased people’s curiosity in the information, even when the information had no effect on their decisions whether to play," the web site notes.

The researchers determined that this behavior could only be explained by a model that captured both economic and psychological motives for seeking information. People acquired information based not only on its actual benefit, but also on the anticipation of its benefit, whether or not it had use.

Hsu says that’s akin to wanting to know whether we received a great job offer, even if we have no intention of taking it. “Anticipation serves to amplify how good or bad something seems, and the anticipation of a more pleasurable reward makes the information appear even more valuable,” he says.