For many years, neuroscientists have investigated the behavioural, computational and neurobiological mechanisms that support value-based decisions, revealing how humans and animals make choices to obtain rewards. However, many decisions are influenced by factors other than the value of physical rewards or second-order reinforcers (such as money). For instance, animals (including humans) frequently explore novel objects that have no intrinsic value solely because they are novel and they exhibit the desire to gain information to reduce their uncertainties about the future, even if this information cannot lead to reward or assist them in accomplishing upcoming tasks. In this Review, I discuss how circuits in the primate brain responsible for detecting, predicting and assessing novelty and uncertainty regulate behaviour and give rise to these behavioural components of curiosity. I also briefly discuss how curiosity-related behaviours arise during postnatal development and point out some important reasons for the persistence of curiosity across generations.

多年来，神经科学家研究了支持基于价值的决策的行为、计算和神经生物学机制，揭示了人类和动物如何做出选择以获得奖励。然而，许多决策都受到物质奖励或二阶强化物（例如金钱）价值以外的因素的影响。例如，动物（包括人类）经常探索没有内在价值的新物体，仅仅是因为它们很新奇，并且它们表现出获取信息以减少对未来的不确定性的渴望，即使这些信息不能带来奖励或帮助它们完成即将到来的任务。在这篇综述中，我讨论了灵长类动物大脑中负责检测、预测和评估新颖性和不确定性的回路如何调节行为并产生好奇心的这些行为成分。我还简要讨论了在出生后发育过程中与好奇心相关的行为是如何产生的，并指出了好奇心在几代人中持续存在的一些重要原因。