For some, listening to music is a joyless act; science shows why

Most folks love listening to music, though there’s a lot of difference in what people choose for listening pleasure.

But for a subset of people, there is no pleasure, even though their hearing is normal and other activities light them up.

There’s a disconnect for those folks creating a condition called “specific musical anhedonia.” Anhedonia refers to an inability to feel pleasure. And the lack of pleasure in music stems from inadequate communication between the sections of the brain responsible for hearing and the brain’s reward system, according to research published in the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

The researchers, from the University of Barcelona, think the findings may help explain the experience of pleasure and happiness.

“A similar mechanism could underlie individual differences in responses to other rewarding stimuli,” study author and neuroscientist Josep Marco-Pallarés said in a news release on the findings. “Investigating these circuits could pave the way for new research on individual differences and reward-related disorders such as anhedonia, addiction or eating disorders.”

Music and its rewards

The research team came up with an assessment they called the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire to see how people respond to music across different dimensions: emotional response, mood regulation, social bonding, physical movement — dancing is an example — and the urge to seek or collect new musical experiences.

Those with musical anhedonia scored low in all five of those categories, the release said.

Next, scans were used to confirm what had been believed about a weak connection between brain networks.

“People with musical anhedonia can recognize and process melodies without difficulty, showing that the auditory system itself is functioning normally,” per the release. “They simply do not feel pleasure from the experience.”

Functional MRI brain scans showed the same thing. When listening to music, those individuals had reduced activity in the reward circuit, but responded normally to other rewarding events, such as winning money. “This indicated that the reward system is intact but not effectively linked to music processing,” per the researchers.

The reward system works ok, but communication between the auditory network and the reward circuit is inadequate when it comes to music.

Genetics, environment and individuals

The researchers reported they’re not sure exactly why some have musical anhedonia, “but both genetic makeup and life experiences appear to contribute.” They said a recent study of twins suggests genetics may be responsible for just over half of the difference in how much individuals enjoy music.

They noted that the idea that pleasure is “either present or absent” is likely not true. It’s more likely that pleasure “exists along a spectrum,” per the report. The study noted that “although research on individual differences in music reward sensitivity is still a young field with many open questions, it suggests that reward experiences depend not only on the general functioning of the reward system but also on the sensory and cognitive pathways that access it. In the case of music, the coordinated activity of auditory and striatal networks via prefrontal areas is critical.”

The researchers believe their methodology could be used to study other reward types and perhaps find other anhedonias, such as for specific foods. Said Marco-Pallarés, “It’s possible, for instance, that people with specific food anhedonia may have some deficit in the connectivity between brain regions involved in food processing and the reward circuitry.” That could mean that different specific reward ”dysfunctions" drive differences in what sparks joy or pleasure.

The researchers are also teaming up with geneticists to see if there are specific genes that help drive musical anhedonia. And other research includes whether anhedonia changes over a lifetime, which could help determine if musical anhedonia could be reversed.