Introduction Curiosity is inquisitive thinking with a desire to learn or know something new. Children are innately inquisitive and their curiosity leads to constant exploration of the world around them. Unfortunately, the use of exploration in learning is a learning pedagogy that is difficult to maintain. The classroom full of exploration and curiosity as a child turns into a sedentary classroom led primarily by electronic communication (Figure 1). If we are not careful, we can find that students stop exploring and instead are only memorizing. Students may forget the importance or value of asking why, how, and what and instead accept what is given to them to be truth or fact. Using curiosity, the brain can be a very powerful tool that can promote increased memory and enjoyment in the learning process. Curiosity is something I use regularly in the classroom. I believe that when curiosity piqued, students are better learners and better researchers. Below are some examples of ways I achieve this in my teaching: 2. Use the right hemisphere through art for learning I like to use art in projects to get students to build things with their hands and create physical 3D models to improve their learning. Below is an example where 3. Encourage interactive creativity & curiosity I believe peers are the best source of piquing curiosity. Interactive team activities are the best way to engage students’ curiosity together. Curiosity & Teaching The Brain & Curiosity Curiosity Prepares the Brain for Learning Curiosity has been shown to put the brain in a state that promotes learning and retention of information. Grubber et al. (2014) read trivia questions followed by a presentation of a visual image of a face to a group of participants. Participants rated the trivia based on their level of interest or curiosity. Following the visual and verbal stimuli, researchers examined how well the participants could retain the trivia answers and the faces shown at the time of each trivia statement. The investigators found that the greater the curiosity in the question, the better the individual could remember the trivia and the unrelated face shown just after the trivia. These findings demonstrated that curiosity could prepare Are you Curious Yet? Exploiting the Brain’s Untapped Power to Promote Learning Jamie L Perry, PhD Jamie Perry, CCC-SLP, PhD Associate Professor Interim Department Chair East Carolina University (252) Gruber M, Gelman B, Ranganath C. States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit. Neuron A typical classroom for children filled with activities that promote exploration & interactive group activities A typical college classroom using digital learning with a mostly non-interactive learning environ- ment right-brain-whole-brain-learning/ the brain for learning and was associated with long-term memory of even unimportant details when paired with something that piqued curiosity. Using fMRI, the researchers further identified the following: 1.Curiosity stimulated regions of the hippocampus, which is involved in creating memories. 2.There appears to be an interaction of the hippocampus and the dopamine reward system in connection with curiosity, which is responsible for making curiosity intrinsically rewarding. 3.This interaction also promotes long-term memory and also retention of unimportant information that is paired with curiosity. Using Right Brain Activities in Teaching Curiosity is considered to be a whole brain process (Creative-Innovation Model) including a sequence of: interest (left and right hemisphere), preparation (left hemisphere), incubation (right hemisphere), illumination (right hemisphere), verification (left hemisphere), and application (left and right hemisphere). The role of the right hemisphere is considered to be essential to the beginning of the creative process and reasoning/logic/analysis associated with the left hemisphere allows for examination and exploration of those creative ideas. For this reason, pairing art or creative activities using the right hemisphere, is an important way to promote curiosity in our student learners. 1. Model curiosity to the students It is about the student’s curiosity, not mine Teach students that some things are absolute, but many things are negotiable and ever changing Leave students with the job of finding out how or why something happens students are instructed to create a skeletal muscle model. This project has shown to greatly simplify an otherwise complex aspect of the class.