Music can be Addictive

Music has been around for thousands of years and can be found all around us. Many people love listening to music, an activity which is reinforced by the listener himself based on its aesthetic reward. Scientists have long believed that our aesthetic appreciation for our favorite music is caused by activation of the reward pathways in our brain. Valorie Salimpoor, Mitchel Benovoy, Kevin Larcher, Alain Dagher, and Robert J Zatorre, of McGill University in Montreal, conducted a study using the neurochemical specificity of PET and interestingly, the temporal resolution of fMRI. Through PET scanning combined with a psychophysiological measure of autonomic nervous system arousal (chills) humans experience at peak emotional arousal, they discovered endogenous dopamine release in the striatum and decided to investigate the time course of this particular release. An fMRI investigation of the same music listening behavior to pleasurable stimuli and neutral stimuli was conducted using the voxels examined from the PET study. The researchers found a much stronger BOLD signal in the nucleus accumbens during peak arousal, likely indicating the presence of an emotional euphoric feeling. In addition, increased BOLD response was noted right before peak arousal in the caudate. The researchers explain this as anticipation of a euphoric emotional state, or reward prediction, and suggest that the reason music has been around for so long is that we “crave” the emotional peaks we experience while listening to it. However, greater investigation must be done to learn about the causes for this anticipation. As someone who loves music and always has a song in my head, I am interested in learning much more about how humans learn to appreciate aesthetic rewards. 

To read the paper published regarding this study, please read here.