Full disclosure: I am absolutely, unequivocally, shamelessly obsessed with music. I have a record collection that’s nearing the 1,000 mark. I’ve been to hundreds of shows in a little more than two decades. I have five favorite bands, each of which has held its title for well over 10 years. And all of my closest friendships were formed around music. Simply put, I am an unabashed, card-carrying music snob.
So when I came across an article that suggested, “Some people just don’t like music,” I was floored. Sure, I can understand folks who don’t spend thousands of hours researching artists and record labels, or those who gravitate toward one genre over another. But to simply not like music as a whole –– well, that seemed a step too far.
Nevertheless, it’s true. And unsurprisingly, it’s no fault of the individual. Beginning in the early ’90s, researchers were attempting to decipher why some people don’t derive any pleasure from music. However, it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that various threads started coming together.
Analyzing ‘musical anhedonia’
Now, a study published earlier this month in the journal Cell Press is shedding even more light on this little-understood phenomenon. The condition, known as “musical anhedonia,” is down to a disconnect between the brain’s auditory mechanisms and its reward pathways.
“This lack of pleasure for music is explained by disconnectivity between the reward circuit and the auditory network –– not by the functioning of their reward circuit, per se,” said Josep Marco-Pallarés, a neuroscientist at the University of Barcelona and one of the study’s lead authors.
Music anhedonia reportedly affects between 5% and 10% of the population. What’s more, a study from earlier this year suggested that while some people can develop music anhedonia following a traumatic brain injury, more often the condition is genetic.
On the other side of the spectrum sits roughly 25% of the population who are “hyperhedonic,” or possess an “obsessive urge to engage intensely and frequently with music,” as Catherine Loveday describes it in a recent article for The Conversation.
How is someone diagnosed with musical anhedonia?
According to Loveday, researchers such as Marco-Pallarés and his colleagues in Canada use the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) when attempting to study and quantify musical anhedonia. As its name suggests, the BMRQ contains several questions to gauge a person’s relationship with music, including how often they listen to it, if they interact by humming or singing, and if there are any tracks that “give them a shiver down the spine.”
After administering the questionnaire, some researchers will go one step further and measure a participant’s vitals, including their heart rate, sweat response and breathing while music is playing.
Such physiological markers should indicate a strong response to at least some music in any given listener. However, Loveday notes, in those with musical anhedonia, it often produces no response at all.
It’s a sentiment expressed in a Reddit thread four years ago. There, a user explained, “Music doesn’t make me ‘feel’ anything, and it doesn’t express thoughts to which I can ‘relate.’”
They went on to write, “I’ve gone through phases where I tried to get into everything from heavy metal to classical. None of it is enjoyable. Songs are just a couple minutes of annoying sounds being strung together in a loose pattern.”
Similarly, an anonymous author writing on the website Insanitek in 2018 said, “I don’t hate music, but I don’t love it either. I don’t willingly listen to music and I don’t actively seek it out. Of course, I can’t totally avoid it, but I try.”
Explaining the underlying causes
Researchers have attempted to tie musical anhedonia to a broader anhedonia –– the psychological condition that bars a person from deriving pleasure from anything in life. Such a disorder generally underpins depression.
However, as Loveday points out, those who suffer from musical anhedonia typically react positively to other pleasure stimuli, including food, film and chatting with friends.
Meanwhile, researchers theorized that perhaps those who suffer from musical anhedonia simply don’t understand music. Put another way, their brains are ill-equipped to process melody and harmony.
However, research has shown that this is also an insufficient means to explain musical anhedonia, as those who have it didn’t demonstrate any difficulties in recognizing songs or distinguishing between chords.
Rather, the researchers from Barcelona and Canada determined that what’s actually happening in the brain of someone with musical anhedonia is “a disconnection between the auditory and reward network when listening to music.”
Or, as Loveday describes it, “There is little to no traffic between the auditory processing parts of the brain and the reward center.”
Outside of the realm of music, Loveday said that the research could be used to inform studies on other disproportionate reward responses, such as eating disorders, sex addiction and gambling problems.
At any rate, suffice it to say that this music nerd will be thinking much more critically about his own relationship with the aural arts. In the meantime, does anyone know where I can get tested for hyperhedonic tendencies?
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Diane Duenez
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