Do you get excited by only thinking about learning something new? Do you find approaching complex ideas satisfying? Are you intrigued by nuances?
If so, you may have an increased sensitivity to dopamine, but not in the traditional sense.
This neurotransmitter has long been associated with our most primitive appetites, such as sweets, social behavior, and sex. Only recently, many research papers have been published on the discovery of new reward neural pathways that associate with our "mental" needs, that appear to be as important as the more physical ones for our psychological balance.
In general, the need to explore has long been deeply rooted in our DNA. By itself, the unknown is both a source of fear and reward. Dopamine is involved in regulating both cues relating to a specific reward, for example, a piece of chocolate, and cues relating to the information linked to a reward, for example knowing that you got into your dream school.
There is also an interesting theory, called the unifying theory, for which all the dopamine pathways are interdependent, and all respond to an increased drive towards exploration. As a result of this, an increase in the global levels of dopamine would cause the activation of behavioral and cognitive mechanisms that lead to exploration. This link seems to be rooted in evolution, as it suggests that this path-dependency seems to be more of a multi-branched hierarchical structure, where there is one higher-order function that all the functions have in common, and that is exploration.
This structure appears to be even more complex, as different branches carry out different roles in different parts of our brain, and sometimes these roles may be so diverse to seem contradictory.
In order to understand this, we must first focus on two things. First of all, we must understand that we are what in psychology is called cybernetic systems. This means, we generally encode three types of information, which are: our current state, our goal or end state, the operators that can lead us to achieve the end state from our current state. In cybernetic terms, an action that puts us one step closer to reaching our goals is a reward, whereas an action that pulls us away or decreases the likelihood of us reaching the "end state" is a punishment.
But what is psychological entropy?
Simply put, entropy is often referred to as the degree of disorder in a system. In this case, entropy can be defined as the number of options that are available to an individual at any given time. For example, the higher the number of questions like "what is happening to me now?" "What should I do?", "What will be the effect of my actions?" the higher the degree of psychological entropy.
However, in this case, psychological entropy doesn't seem to be rewarding, but rather threatening or overwhelming. In fact, this mechanism is aversive because it diminishes the likelihood of reaching our goals, as we are unsure about how we can effectively reach them.
As we understand this, we may ask ourselves: how can uncertainty be linked with a reward?
The truth is that we don't necessarily know the outcome of the increased entropy given by uncertainty. In fact, just as it happens before a performance, we don't know what the outcome will be, it may be negative, but we can actually get a standing ovation. In this case, we see how a state of uncertainty, of increased psychological entropy, which corresponds to a loss of control over a situation, can be linked to a positive emotion, as we learn that we could actually receive an unexpected reward. Over time, we may actually link the act of performing with a positive emotion, as the number of wins is bigger than the number of failures. This is especially true for animals, where they have developed responses to an unknown stimulus that can be either defensive or exploratory, whenever prediction of the outcome of events fails.
By this, we see how exploration can be defined as the act of getting in control of events, of decreasing the number of potential outcomes to one or a few cases, that is, decreasing psychological entropy. As we may realize, also by recalling our own experiences, this mechanism has many connections and applications in our lives, as many brain pathways are controlled by it, and one of which is actually more of a "mental reward". In general, by understanding the mechanism of exploration, we can understand learning as a way to decrease psychological entropy, to make certain the uncertain, and that is why we love new information.
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