Summary: A new study finds that people with specific musical anhedonia—those who do not derive pleasure from music—show reduced connectivity between auditory cortical areas and subcortical reward regions of the brain.
Source: McGill University.
Have you ever known someone who simply isn’t moved by music? That experience can reflect a condition called specific musical anhedonia, which affects an estimated three to five percent of the population.
Researchers from the University of Barcelona and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University investigated the neural basis of this phenomenon. They report that individuals who do not find music rewarding show weaker functional connections between cortical regions that process sound and subcortical nodes of the reward system.
To explore why some people fail to experience pleasure from music, the team recruited 45 healthy adults who completed a standardized questionnaire measuring sensitivity to musical reward. Based on their responses, participants were sorted into three equal groups representing low, average, and high sensitivity to music. While undergoing fMRI scanning, subjects listened to musical excerpts and provided continuous pleasure ratings in real time. To compare responses to a different type of reward, participants also completed a monetary gambling task during which they could win or lose actual money.
Analysis of the fMRI data revealed a striking pattern. When listening to music, participants with specific musical anhedonia exhibited reduced activity in the nucleus accumbens, a central subcortical component of the brain’s reward network. Importantly, this reduced activity was specific to music: the same individuals showed normal nucleus accumbens activation during the monetary gambling task, indicating intact reward responses for other stimulus types.
Further investigation demonstrated diminished functional connectivity in the music-anhedonic group between auditory cortical regions—responsible for processing sound—and the nucleus accumbens. By contrast, participants who reported strong sensitivity to musical reward displayed enhanced connectivity between these auditory regions and the ventral striatum. These results point to a failure of interaction between auditory cortical networks and mesolimbic reward pathways as a likely neural basis for the lack of musical pleasure in affected individuals.
The study’s findings align with broader evidence that disrupted connectivity between sensory-processing cortices and reward regions can underlie domain-specific deficits in pleasure. For example, previous work in children with autism spectrum disorder has linked a diminished pleasurable response to the human voice to reduced coupling between the posterior superior temporal sulcus and nodes of the reward network, including the nucleus accumbens. Together, these studies emphasize the central role of neural connectivity in shaping how different stimuli are experienced as rewarding.
According to Robert Zatorre, an MNI neuroscientist and co-author of the study, “These findings not only explain individual differences in how the reward system responds to music, but also have potential implications for developing therapies that target reward-related disorders such as apathy, depression, and addiction.”
Funding: This research appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was supported by grants from the Governments of Spain and Catalonia, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Source: Shawn Hayward — McGill University.
Image credit: Hans Braxmeier.
Original research: Martínez-Molina N., Mas-Herrero E., Rodríguez-Fornells A., Zatorre R. J., & Marco-Pallarés J., “Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Published online September 27, 2016. doi:10.1073/pnas.1611211113.
Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia
Music is a widespread source of pleasure across human cultures, yet some individuals derive no reward from music despite normal auditory perception and intact reward responses in other domains. This study investigated whether such specific musical anhedonia reflects altered interaction between auditory cortical networks and mesolimbic reward systems. Using fMRI in three groups of participants with differing sensitivity to musical reward, the researchers found that music-anhedonic individuals showed selective reduction of nucleus accumbens activity in response to music, while exhibiting normal activation during a monetary gambling task. Additionally, the music-anhedonic group demonstrated decreased functional connectivity between right auditory cortex and ventral striatum, whereas individuals with above-average musical reward sensitivity displayed enhanced connectivity. These results suggest that reduced interplay between auditory cortex and subcortical reward circuitry underlies the absence of pleasure from music.
If you find these findings interesting, consider sharing this summary to inform others about how brain connectivity shapes musical enjoyment and the broader understanding of reward processing.