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By engaging with degraded images on a touch-sensitive display, monkeys could uncover high-resolution portions through finger movements, allowing for natural and unrestricted interaction. Monkeys received juice rewards after touching a predetermined number of pixels, but no specific regions were targeted. Attention maps were generated from their interactions, along with data from human digit-tracking and monkey eye-tracking experiments. Direct comparisons across recording methods revealed that monkey digit-tracking attention maps were significantly correlated with both monkey eye-tracking and human digit-tracking maps, indicating shared patterns of visual exploration across species and devices. We further applied a saliency model and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model to predict the empirical explorations. The correlation between model prediction maps and empirical attention maps indicated that monkeys focused non-randomly on information-rich regions, with the CNN model providing the most accurate predictions. These findings suggest that exploration was driven by intrinsic curiosity, beyond the extrinsic rewards for interaction. Digit-tracking offers a minimally invasive, portable alternative to eye-tracking, expanding research opportunities in visual cognition within ecologically valid settings.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-026-57654-4","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,14]],"date-time":"2026-06-14T01:23:31Z","timestamp":1781400211000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Digit-tracking reveals curiosity-driven visual attention in macaque monkeys"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"16","author":[{"given":"Yidong","family":"Yang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Antoine","family":"Ameloot","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Guillaume","family":"Lio","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Angela","family":"Sirigu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jean-Ren\u00e9","family":"Duhamel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"57654_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"12","DOI":"10.1167\/17.3.12","volume":"17","author":"MA Segraves","year":"2017","unstructured":"Segraves, M. 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