The Neuropsychology of Exploration
After the pandemic, it is no surprise that people are looking for ways to reconnect with the world around them and explore new places. A McKinsey survey showed participants’ second most desired pursuit after dining out was travelling. Findings also suggest that leisure travel can increase creativity by reducing stress, increasing positive emotions, and cognitive flexibility.
I recently returned from a short remote-working trip to Barcelona, where I experienced these benefits firsthand, even though I wasn’t travelling entirely for leisure. The fact that I was in a new place outside my usual environment, gave me a newfound focus and drive. It gave me the best of both worlds: the possibility to work on launching a new experience while enjoying a foreign and culturally rich environment.
But I also realised that despite my desire to go out and explore the city, I was stuck on where to go other than the typical tourist places every travel website and influencer suggests. I struggled to find places that I knew I would enjoy. It wasn’t until I arrived back in London and woke up on Monday to a Slack message from Freddie, our CEO and Co-Founder, saying: “Just had a moment of clarity. Let’s brainstorm on it later”, that it started to clear up why. Let me tell you, that was an effective way to kickstart the week — we’ve been in a state of flow ever since.
That moment of clarity was a breakthrough in our vision for Hyper SQ and the impact we envision. We are creating the Movement Economy by building a mobile experience that monetises movement by rewarding people simply for going places. With our phones attached to us each day, we’re effectively nodes in a broader network of validators that contribute to our movement patterns. You can read about our vision in more detail here.
Only a tiny fraction of individuals that post content are rewarded. It excludes everyone else that creates value by just going to a place. Their visit is validated through their proof of experience (PoS). More often than not, the best trips result from suggestions from friends or family rather than the newest influencer you’re following. Their experience validates the place. We believe that our choices about what to explore are relative to other people, and we often enjoy places suggested by like-minded people.
It was clear: I struggled to find non-touristy places I would enjoy because I was resorting to mainstream media and influencers for suggestions like most people. Neither option was based on the experiences of people like me. And then the gears started to turn even more: why do we have this desire for exploration? How can we explain it using neuroscience?
Famous American neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp argues that the human brain has seven core instincts: anger, fear, panic-grief, maternal care, pleasure/lust, play and seeking. Our seeking system — the system responsible for our motivation, urge to explore and need to understand — is perhaps the most important. Our seeking system works by rewarding us with dopamine for exploring our environment and seeking new information.
Our dopamine-energised brain then encourages further exploration, curiosity, and interest. Panskepp believes that our seeking system helps explain our constant need for exploration and fulfilment in the activities we pursue. It creates an addiction to exploration. Why is this? Well, exploratory behaviour is adaptive and a way to respond to changes in stimuli. Exploration is usually a result of being in a novel environment which drives the individual to be adaptive by trying to learn as much about their environment as possible.
Regular exploration of environments, novel play interactions, and engagement activate the seeking system. The more you engage with this system, the stronger its pathways become and the craving for exploration increases. Scientists have termed the brain’s part of the dopamine reward system as the brain’s “seat of adventure”. This is called the ventral striatum, which is activated each time you do something new, or unfamiliar. Simply getting out of your comfort zone, and your everyday routine can activate this part of your brain.
Panksepp believes that “perhaps the best therapy for depression, at least in its milder forms, is to coax people to play again. And also to have lots of physical activity which can invigorate many brain systems.” At Hyper SQ, we are creating a platform that keeps your seeking system active by gamifying physical activity to get you out and about, rewarded for the value you intrinsically provide through that experience.
Join the Movement Economy today by signing up for our waitlist here.
