"But even people with really good memory will remember only a small fraction of what happened two days ago." "In any given day, we encounter a barrage of new information," says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the researchers behind the study. And at the heart of it all is curiosity.īlackwell, like many others teachers, understands that when kids are curious, they're much more likely to stay engaged.īut why? What, exactly, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the October issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that the brain's chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information. That's something any good teacher lives for. Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. We should base education on this behavior.' "They just have so many burning questions." 'Curiosity really is one of the very intense and very basic impulses in humans. "My biggest challenge usually is trying to keep them patient," she says. Once she got the discussion going, the questions came rapid-fire. Some thought the sun was moving, others, of course, knew that a sunset is the result of the earth spinning around on its axis. "I asked them: 'So what's moving? And why?'" Blackwell says. So Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset on YouTube as part of a physics lesson on motion. How does a sunset work? We love to look at them, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her 8th graders to really think about them, to wonder and question. The Limbic Reward System lights up when curiosity is piqued.
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