The power of curiosity

Our brain is lazy and prefers that each day be exactly the same as the other in an attempt to save energy, doesn't like having to look for new and original solutions to the problems.

In the 1990s, Kirk R. Daffner developed a curious experiment to test the degree of people curiosity. He showed the participants some pairs of drawings, one of the images was always conventional and the other was more imaginative. One of the pairs of figures was made up of two straight lines on one side of the paper while on the other side were stripes and curves that seemed to have been drawn under the influence of drugs.

On the other image you could see on one side a drawing of an elephant and on the other a strange animal that was difficult to identify. When Daffner showed the pairs of images to a group of elderly people and asked them to choose which ones they found most interesting, he was very surprised. All those with Alzheimer's chose conventional drawings, while older people who were more mentally active tended to prefer the more surreal and original images.

Numerous subsequent experiments have shown that people with more flexible and open minds are better preserved over the years and recognize that they are happier. The scans also reveal that people in their 60s, 70s and 80s who are more curious and mentally active have a younger brain because it has more strong nerve connections. Being routine makes your brain a mess.

Passion to know delays mental deterioration, we cannot and shouldn't allow ourselves to tire of life and resign ourselves to stop learning something new with the excuse that we are old. As we get older we need to be more active and curious, neuroscience proves that the brain is flexible and can always learn. There's nothing that activates the pleasure centers more intensely than to delve into everything that interests us.