Summary: Some people experience no emotional response to music—not because of poor taste or hearing loss, but due to a rare condition called specific musical anhedonia. In this condition, the auditory regions of the brain function normally, yet they fail to engage the brain’s reward circuitry when listening to music, leaving musical experiences emotionally flat while other rewards (food, money, social contact) remain pleasurable.
Recent work by the team that first identified musical anhedonia sheds new light on how the brain processes different reward types. Their findings show that reward responsiveness is not simply global; instead, distinct perceptual systems must interact with the reward network for particular experiences to feel rewarding. Understanding these specific disconnections could broaden research into other targeted forms of anhedonia and offer new approaches for studying and treating conditions that involve reward dysfunction.
Key Facts
- Auditory–Reward Disconnect: Individuals with musical anhedonia have intact hearing and functional reward circuits, but the auditory and reward systems fail to communicate effectively when music is heard.
- Selective Pleasure Deficit: The lack of pleasure is selective for music. People with the condition still respond normally to other rewards such as food, money, and social interaction.
- Broader Implications: This pattern suggests the existence of “specific anhedonias” for other stimulus types, with potential implications for research into addiction, depression, eating disorders, and personalized interventions.
Source: Cell Press
Background
About a decade ago, researchers identified a small group of people who reported no pleasure from music despite having normal hearing and otherwise typical emotional responses. They named the condition specific musical anhedonia and began investigating its neural basis. Their work points to a disconnection between the auditory processing network and the brain’s reward circuitry as the primary cause: auditory perception is preserved, but the experience of reward is not linked to musical input.
In a review published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, the research team describes behavioral data, brain imaging findings, and measurement tools that clarify how musical anhedonia arises and what it reveals about reward processing more broadly.
Measuring Music Reward
To identify and study musical anhedonia, the authors developed the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ). The BMRQ probes five distinct ways music can be rewarding: by evoking emotion, by helping regulate mood, by fostering social bonds, through movement and dance, and as a source of novelty or collection. Individuals with musical anhedonia typically score low across these five domains, reflecting a global lack of music-related reward despite intact auditory perception.
Neural Evidence
Behavioral experiments and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) converge on the same conclusion: people with musical anhedonia perceive melodies and process musical structure normally, but their reward circuitry shows reduced activation while listening to music. Importantly, the same reward circuitry responds normally to other incentives, such as monetary gains, indicating that the reward system itself is functional. The core problem appears to be poor connectivity between auditory regions and reward centers when music is the stimulus.
As Josep Marco-Pallarés, the study’s lead author, explains, the phenomenon highlights that reward experiences depend not only on an overall functioning reward system but also on how that system interacts with sensory and perceptual networks specific to each type of reward.
Causes and Variation
Why some people develop musical anhedonia remains uncertain. Twin studies suggest genetic factors may account for a substantial portion of individual differences in music reward sensitivity—one study estimated genetic contributions up to roughly half of the variance—while environmental influences and life experiences likely play a role as well. Even among people without the condition, responsiveness to music and other rewards varies widely, underlining the need to study reward processing at a more granular level.
Broader Research Directions
The authors propose applying the same conceptual and methodological framework used in music research to other types of rewards. Doing so could reveal additional specific anhedonias—instances in which particular perceptual or cognitive systems fail to engage the reward network for a given stimulus, such as certain foods or social cues. Identifying these patterns would improve understanding of individual differences in reward processing and could inform targeted strategies for treating disorders that involve dysregulated motivation and pleasure.
The research team is collaborating with geneticists to search for genes associated with musical anhedonia and plans to investigate whether the trait remains stable across the lifespan or can change with experience or intervention. They are also exploring whether targeted training or therapies could restore connectivity between auditory and reward systems and thereby recover musical pleasure.
Funding:
This research was supported by the European Regional Development Fund, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Government of Catalonia, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Fondation pour l’Audition, Paris.
About this musical anhedonia and auditory neuroscience research news
Author: Julia Grimmett ([email protected])
Source: Cell Press
Contact: Julia Grimmett – Cell Press
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Understanding individual differences to specific rewards through music” by Josep Marco-Pallarés et al., Trends in Cognitive Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.015
Abstract
Understanding individual differences to specific rewards through music
Understanding how reward processing shapes motivation, learning, and affective disorders requires attention to variability across different reward types. Much prior work has treated reward sensitivity as a global trait, but evidence from music shows that people can differ specifically in how rewarding they find a single stimulus class. Musical anhedonia—reduced pleasure from music alongside intact responses to other rewards—demonstrates that perceptual–reward network interactions are crucial. This review outlines a framework in which both the general state of the reward system and its interaction with sensory networks determine whether a stimulus feels rewarding, and it suggests ways to apply music-based methods to study other stimulus-specific anhedonias.