A curious mind could be the solution to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's in older adults

Older adults who remain curious and interested in learning new things may be better equipped to maintain cognitive function and potentially reduce their risk for Alzheimer's disease, according to new research published in PLOS One.

The study, conducted by an international team of psychologists, including several from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that while general curiosity tends to decline with age, a specific kind known as "state curiosity" may increase in older adulthood. This finding challenges earlier research, suggesting a uniform decline in curiosity across the lifespan.

"The psychology literature shows that oftentimes what's known as trait curiosity, or a person's general level of curiosity, tends to decline with age," UCLA psychologist Alan Castel, senior author of the paper, said. "But we thought that was a little bit strange and went against some of the things we saw in some of the older adult participants in our experiments, who would often be very engaged and interested in learning about memory, specifically, but even other forms of trivia."

The researchers, including Mary Whatley—who led the work as a doctoral student at UCLA—along with Kou Murayama and Michiko Sakaki of the University of Tübingen and Kochi University of Technology, sought to investigate the difference between trait curiosity and state curiosity.

State curiosity is defined as the momentary interest people experience when prompted with specific topics or questions. Trait curiosity, by contrast, is a more stable personality trait that reflects a general tendency to seek out new knowledge.

To distinguish the two, the team recruited participants aged 20 to 84 to complete an online questionnaire measuring their general curiosity. To measure state curiosity, participants were asked difficult trivia questions they were unlikely to know the answers to—such as "What was the first country to give women the right to vote?"—and then rated how interested they were in learning the correct answer before revealing it was New Zealand.

Analysis showed trait curiosity declined with age, but state curiosity followed a different pattern. While it decreased slightly in early adulthood, it increased in middle age and continued to rise into old age.

"Our findings fit with some of my work on selectivity theory, which is that as we get older, we don't want to stop learning, we're just more selective about what we want to learn," Castel said. "You see this in the context of lifelong learning: A lot of older adults will go back to take classes or pick up hobbies or engage in bird watching. I think it shows that this level of curiosity, if maintained, can really keep us sharp as we age."

Researchers suggest that practical life demands in early and middle adulthood—such as career pressures, raising children, and paying mortgages—may explain the decline in general curiosity during those years. As people age and transition into retirement, they may gain more freedom to pursue specific interests, which could explain the increased state curiosity later in life.

Castel added that curiosity also affects memory.

"As we get older, maybe we want to be focused on the things that are important, and we forget the things that are less relevant," he said. "Anecdotally, a lot of older adults I speak to say that it's important to stay curious. That fits with some of the research that shows that people who have early stages of dementia might show disinterest in things that they once enjoyed."

While the study shows correlation rather than causation, the findings suggest staying intellectually engaged and curious—particularly about topics that matter personally—could help promote cognitive health in aging populations.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.