Trivia Junction

A Compendium of trivia I find interesting
...for the curious

Why Isn't everyone addicted to learning?

It's addictive – kind of like opium. No, we're not boasting. This is scientific fact. Well, scientific hypothesis at least.

According to Irving Biederman, a professor of neuroscience at USC, whenever you learn something new or enjoy a burst of comprehension, portions of the brain are flooded with natural opium like substances.

This addiction for knowledge occurs in everybody but varies in intensity, says Biederman. The only thing more powerful than our need for knowledge, he said, are the physical demands for food and water.

Biederman's theory is based on 25-year-old research noting that mu-opioid receptors – binding sites for natural opiates – are extremely dense along the ventral visual pathway, a part of the brain involved in image recognition, interpretation and comprehension.

Biederman figures that greater neural activity in areas rich in opioid receptors means greater pleasure. Functional magnetic resonance testing has shown that human volunteers exposed to a variety of images strongly prefer images that provoke the greatest brain activity in the ventral visual pathway. This was particularly true of new images or information.

The brain's craving for knowledge has evolutionary value, according to Biederman. By constantly seeking knowledge and understanding, humans adapt faster and better to their surroundings and circumstances.

Which means that, in a sense, "Ed's Trivia" is a kind of manual for survival.

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