Previous research has described the process by which the interaction between the firing in midbrain dopamine neurons and the hippocampus results in promoting memory for high-value motivational and rewarding events, both extrinsically and intrinsically driven (i.e. curiosity). Studies on social cognition and gossip have also revealed the activation of similar areas from the reward network. In this study we wanted to assess the electrophysiological correlates of the anticipation and processing of novel information (as an intrinsic cognitive reward) depending on the degree of elicited curiosity and the content of the information. 24 healthy volunteers participated in this EEG experiment. The task consisted of 150 questions and answers divided into three different conditions: trivia-like questions, personal-gossip information about celebrities and personal-neutral information about the same celebrities. Our main results from the ERPs and time-frequency analysis pinpointed main differences for gossip in comparison with personal-neutral and trivia-like conditions. Specifically, we found an increase in beta oscillatory activity in the outcome phase and a decrease of the same frequency band in the expectation phase. Larger amplitudes in P300 component were also found for gossip condition. Finally, gossip answers were the most remembered in a one-week memory test. The arousing value and saliency of gossip information, its rewarding effect evidenced by the increase of beta oscillatory power and the recruitment of areas from the brain reward network in previous fMRI studies, as well as its potential social value have been argued in order to explain its differential processing, encoding and recall.

中文翻译：

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八卦信息会增加与奖励相关的振荡活动

先前的研究描述了中脑多巴胺神经元和海马体之间的相互作用促进对高价值激励和奖励事件的记忆的过程，无论是外在驱动还是内在驱动（即好奇心）。对社会认知和八卦的研究也揭示了奖励网络中类似区域的激活。在这项研究中，我们希望根据引发的好奇心和信息内容的程度，评估新信息的预期和处理（作为内在认知奖励）的电生理相关性。24 名健康志愿者参加了此次脑电图实验。该任务由 150 个问题和答案组成，分为三个不同的条件：琐事类问题、关于名人的个人八卦信息和关于同一名人的个人中立信息。我们来自 ERP 和时频分析的主要结果指出了八卦与个人中立和琐事类条件相比的主要差异。具体来说，我们发现结果阶段的 β 振荡活动增加，而预期阶段的相同频带减少。对于八卦条件，还发现了 P300 分量的更大振幅。最后，在为期一周的记忆测试中，八卦答案是最容易记住的。八卦信息的唤起价值和显着性，其奖励效应由先前 fMRI 研究中β振荡功率的增加和大脑奖励网络区域的募集所证明，