How Do the Brains of People Who Don’t Like Music Work? Researchers from the Cognition and Cerebral Plasticity group of the…
How Do the Brains of People Who Don’t Like Music Work?
Researchers from the Cognition and Cerebral Plasticity group of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute and the University of Barcelona (IDIBELL-UB), in collaboration with researchers from the University of McGill (Montreal), have published a new study in which brain mechanisms associated to the lack of sensitivity to music are explained. The study, published by PNAS journal, gives clues about the importance of music at an evolutionary level based on the connection between the auditory and emotional areas of the brain.
Although listening to music is considered a rewarding activity on a universal scale, about 3-5% of the healthy population does not experience pleasurable feelings in response to any type of music. This condition is known by the specific name of musical anhedonia. “Anhedonic people do not have problems correctly perceiving and processing the information contained in a melody (such as intervals or rhythms) and present a normal pleasure response to other pleasant stimuli (such as money), but do not enjoy musical stimuli”, explains Noelia Martínez-Molina, researcher at the IDIBELL-UB group and lead author of the study. Although the existence of this phenomenon has been known for some years, it was not known why or how it was produced.
“Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia” by Noelia Martínez-Molina, Ernest Mas-Herrero, Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, Robert J. Zatorre, and Josep Marco-Pallarés in PNAS. Published online October 31 2016 doi:10.1073/pnas.1611211113
Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia. NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to IDIBELL.
*What if you could take a pill and not like music any more