Sometimes working at ScienceAlert it's hard not to have our minds blown all over the place - every day we're learning about new science that, quite frankly, is amazing.

But what's the point of all this mind-boggling awe we're feeling? According to the latest episode of BrainCraft, it may be a tool that's helped made us human.

While filming this episode, BrainCraft founder Vanessa Hill was in Iceland, where there's plenty of mind-blowing scenery. There are also some cool words to learn, such as vitur, which in Icelandic means to be full of wisdom, or vit.

Why are we telling you this? Because recent research revealed that learning new words activates the same regions of the brain as pleasurable activities such as eating chocolate and gambling. 

And scientists now believe that, because of this activity in the reward system, humans may have been motivated to learn language and acquire linguistic skills throughout our evolution.

While other animals also learn, humans appear to be unique in the way we record our knowledge and then share it with everyone we know - and perhaps it's this feeling of being mind-blown that encourages us to do that.

As the neurological studies suggest - curiosity is contagious, and, just like gambling and chocolate, it's also addictive. 

So why are we more regularly mind-blown by YouTube videos than regular conversation? Watch the episode above to find out (and see a cameo from a certain VSauce presenter).

Long live vit.

Source: BrainCraft