How curiosity rewires your brain for change
- sciart0
- May 12
- 2 min read
Excerpt: "A few years ago, I decided to retrain as a neuroscientist. It was a leap into the unknown — no roadmap, just a desire to grow. I chose to approach this time of change with curiosity, and I started a weekly newsletter to document what I learned.
Suddenly, my doubts became fuel for discovery.
What I didn’t know at the time was that this systematic curiosity was actively reshaping my brain in ways that would build resilience for navigating future changes.
Curiosity is often treated as a personality quirk — something childlike and playful, maybe even optional. But neuroscience paints a different picture. When we’re curious, the brain’s dopaminergic system — the same one that lights up when we anticipate a reward — kicks into gear. Simply put, curiosity makes us feel good about the prospect of discovering something new.
It also helps us learn more efficiently, enhancing hippocampal activity and boosting our capacity to form and retain new memories. Studies show that when people are curious about a topic, they not only remember the specific information they were interested in but also retain unrelated material better.
Perhaps most importantly, curiosity promotes neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire itself in response to new experiences. This makes it an ideal cognitive state for those inevitable moments of change when we need to break established neural patterns and form new connections.
Curiosity in times of change
Change, by nature, introduces uncertainty. And the human brain typically responds to uncertainty by activating the amygdala, triggering the same stress responses as physical danger.
What curiosity does is transform that uncertainty from a threat into an invitation."