In the human brain, our curiosity is treated much like other pleasurable activities like eating. When we actively pursue new information through the door marked curiosity, we're rewarded with a flood of the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine. Yeah!!!
In addition to the reward system, other areas of the brain play a role in curiosity as well. It appears that regions dedicated to working memory in the prefrontal cortex allow us to distinguish between new and previously experienced stimuli. Curiosity wouldn’t have much value if we couldn't recognize things we've already encountered?
The human brain is a tangled, seemingly random mess of neurons that do not behave in a predictable manner.
Although it is impossible to precisely calculate, it is postulated that the human brain operates at 1 exaFLOP, which is equivalent to a billion billion calculations per second.
All we are......
A molecular reactor of exquistely precise chemical interations
"Biology is a beautiful thing. For example, the brain is both hardware and software. Interconnected areas, linked by billions of neurons and perhaps trillions of glial cells, can perceive, interpret, store, analyze, and redistribute at the same time. The same calculations and processes that might take a computer a few millions steps can be achieved by a few hundred neuron transmissions, requiring far less energy and performing at a far greater efficiency."
The earliest evidence of eukaryotes, (from which it may be argued), all life evolved, suggests that eukaryotes evolved somewhere between 2.0 and 3.5 billion years ago.
Perhaps if we were to add up the cumulative energy expended by the entire panoply of diverse life forms, from the microscopic amoebas to the bi-peds we are today, that lived and died and evolved over all those billions of years, then maybe we would recognise the true cost of the astounding low enrgy brain function we benefit from today!