Dr. Vicky Williamson, psychologist, “Music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems”

It’s no secret that listening to enjoyable music gives people pleasure. When your favorite song is playing you may have noticed that you get goosebumps or the chills, and your skin begins to tingle, a sensation known as ‘music frisson’.

Researchers have found that this is the result of the body’s same reward system that is linked to feelings of pleasure from food, drugs and sex. Just like those tangible pleasures, music causes the brain to release the feel-good hormone dopamine, even just when anticipating a loved tune.

“Music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems”

The research was carried out by a team of scientists at McGill University’s Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital (The Neuro). By scanning the brains of participants using PET and fMRI brain imaging techniques, they were able to clearly measure dopamine releases when people were listening to music, producing a music frisson.

Additionally, participants experienced “changes in skin conductance, heart rate, breathing, and temperature that were correlated with pleasurability ratings of the music.” This effect was “greater for pleasurable versus neutral music, and that levels of release are correlated with the extent of emotional arousal and pleasurability ratings,” noted the researchers.

Dr Vicky Williamson, a music psychologist at Goldsmiths College, University of London, told the BBC that this research proves that “music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems.”

“These findings provide neurochemical evidence that intense emotional responses to music involve ancient reward circuitry in the brain,” Dr. Robert Zatorre, a neuroscientist at The Neuro, said in a statement.

While further study is needed to explain why music has this effect, Patrick Whelan, a Harvard Medical School lecturer, posits that it may have to do with evolutionary biology. Before mammals came to dominate the planet, most were probably nocturnal to avoid predators. They had to rely on their hearing, along with their sense of smell, to keep them safe, remaining hyperfocused and hyperattentive.

Unlike a focused conversation, listening to music, especially at a live venue, “there’s an incredible complex sound signature all around you,” Whelan pointed out. “The brain has to sift through all the ambient noise in a concert hall. It’s a much more primitive form of listening,” he explained.

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