Music moves

There are a few universal constants; for instance, eggs and jam should not be mixed…this we hold to be a fundamental truth. It is also a recognised principle of physics that the quality of a film script is inversely proportional to the salary of the main star. It is equally fundamental to the nature of the universe that music has the power to stir the emotions of all human beings…or does it?

In a new study the impact of music on the reward system of the human brain was examined. The human reward system is a network of brain regions including the ventral striatum, the amygdala, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and more. Rewards of all types from money to music activate these mesolimbic structures in the same way but are they universal; does music stimulate reward and resulting emotion in all people?

To test this researchers had people undertake two experiments. One experiment involved music and the other a monetary reward. At the same time as they did the experiments the researchers measured physiological measures of emotion like changes in skin conductance response and heart rate.

What the researchers found was that there are some healthy people with normal perceptual function who do not have an emotional response to music. They theorise that this might be to do with some sort of disruption in the connectivity in between the auditory nerve and the ventral striatum. They have called this condition where music does not speak to emotions “musical anhedonia”.

Whatever the cause though it seems that some people are neurologically not emotionally affected by music. So next time you are about to yell at someone, “Oh come on! How can you not love that song!”, just pause and remember for a moment it could be a ventral striatum connectivity issue, especially if that person doesn’t react emotionally to any music…but it’s probably best not to point that out to them.