People who don’t like music missing this in their brain

By Stephen Beech

People who don’t enjoy music may lack key connections in their brain, suggests a new study.

Researchers discovered a small group of people 10 years ago who derive no pleasure from music, despite having normal hearing and the ability to enjoy other experiences or stimuli.

The condition - “specific musical anhedonia” - is caused by a disconnect between the brain’s auditory and reward networks, say scientists.

In a new study, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, the team that discovered specific musical anhedonia detailed the brain mechanisms behind the condition.

They say understanding it could reveal other differences in how people experience pleasure and joy.

Study author and neuroscientist Professor Josep Marco-Pallarés, of the University of Barcelona in Spain, said: “A similar mechanism could underlie individual differences in responses to other rewarding stimuli.

“Investigating these circuits could pave the way for new research on individual differences and reward-related disorders such as anhedonia, addiction, or eating disorders.”

To identify musical anhedonia, the team developed a tool called the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) that measures how rewarding a person finds music.

The questionnaire examines five different ways in which music can be rewarding: by evoking emotion; by helping regulate mood; by fostering social connections; through dance or movement; and as something novel to seek, collect, or experience.

People with musical anhedonia generally score low on all five aspects of the BMRQ.

Marco-Pallarés says behavioral and brain imaging studies have both supported the idea that specific musical anhedonia is due to a disconnection between brain regions.

He said people with the condition can perceive and process musical melodies, meaning that their auditory brain circuits are intact - they simply don’t derive pleasure from doing so.

MRI scans also showed that when listening to music, people with musical anhedonia have reduced activity in the reward circuit - the part of the brain that processes rewards including food, sex, and art - but a normal level of activity in response to other rewarding stimuli, such as winning money, indicating that their reward circuit is also intact.

Marco-Pallarés said: “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."

Co-author Dr. Ernest Mas-Herrero, also of the University of Barcelona, said: “If the reward circuit is not working well, you get less pleasure from all kinds of rewards.

“Here, what we point out is that it might not only be the engagement of this circuitry that is important, but also how it interacts with other brain regions that are relevant for the processing of each reward type.”

The researchers say that why people develop the condition is still unclear, but studies have shown that genetics and environment could both play a role.

A recently published study on twins shows that genetic effects could be responsible for up to 54% of how much an individual enjoys music.

The researchers say that, even among healthy people, there is a lot of variation in how responsive people are to rewards.

Marco-Pallarés added, “We propose that using our methodology to study other reward types could yield the discovery of other specific anhedonias.

“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.”

The researchers are currently collaborating with geneticists to identify specific genes that might be involved in specific musical anhedonia.

They also plan to investigate whether the condition is a stable trait or something that changes through life -and whether musical anhedonia can be reversed.