Why Music Makes You Happy
 

Why Music Makes You Happy
Listening to music releases dopamine, a feel-good chemical associated with addiction.

By Emily Sohn







THE GIST

* Listening to moving music causes the brain to release dopamine, a feel-good chemical.
* Dopamine-induced pleasure may help explain why music has been such a big part of human societies throughout history.
* Understanding why people like listening to music is helping scientists understand human pleasure.



Music makes you feel happy by releasing the feel-good chemical, dopamine. Click to enlarge this image.



People love music for much the same reason they're drawn to sex, drugs, gambling and delicious food, according to new research. When you listen to tunes that move you, the study found, your brain releases dopamine, a chemical involved in both motivation and addiction.

Even just anticipating the sounds of a composition like Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" or Phish's "You Enjoy Myself" can get the feel-good chemical flowing, found the study, which was the first to make a concrete link between dopamine release and musical pleasure.

The findings offer a biological explanation for why music has been such a major part of major emotional events in cultures around the world since the beginning of human history. Through music, the study also offers new insights into how the human pleasure system works.

"You're following these tunes and anticipating what's going to come next and whether it's going to confirm or surprise you, and all of these little cognitive nuances are what's giving you this amazing pleasure," said Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal. "The reinforcement or reward happens almost entirely because of dopamine."

"This basically explains why music has been around for so long," she added. "The intense pleasure we get from it is actually biologically reinforcing in the brain, and now here's proof for it."

In a previous study, Salimpoor and colleagues linked music-induced pleasure with a surge in intense emotional arousal, including changes in heart rate, pulse, breathing rate and other measurements. Along with these physical changes, people often report feelings of shivers or chills. When that happens during a listening experience, Salimpoor's group and others have found evidence that blood flows to regions in the brain involved in dopamine release.

To solidify the dopamine link, the researchers recruited eight music-lovers, who brought to the lab samples of music that gave them chills of pleasure. Most picks were classical, with some jazz, rock and popular music mixed in, including Led Zeppelin and Dave Matthews Band. The most popular selection was Barbar's Adagio for Strings.

After 15 minutes of listening, scientists injected participants with a radioactive substance that binds to dopamine receptors. With a machine called a PET scanner, the scientists were then able to see if that substance simply circulated through listeners' blood, which would indicate that they had already released a lot of dopamine, and that the dopamine was tying up all available receptors.

If most of their dopamine receptors were free, on the other hand, the radioactive substance would bind to them.

The technique showed, definitively for the first time, that people's brains released large amounts of dopamine when they listened to music that gave them chills, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience. When the same people listened to less moving music the next day, their dopamine receptors remained wide open.

Once the researchers knew for sure that dopamine was behind the pleasure of music, they put participants in an fMRI machine and played the moving music for them again. In this part of the experiment, the scanners showed that the brain pumped out dopamine both during the phase of musical anticipation and at the moment when chills hit in full force. The two surges happened in different areas of the brain.

"It is amazing that we can release dopamine in anticipation of something abstract, complex and not concrete," Salimpoor said. "This is the first study to show that dopamine can be released in response to an aesthetic stimulus."

The findings suggest that, like sex and drugs, music may be mildly addictive, said David Huron, a music cognition researcher at Ohio State University, Columbus.

Dopamine is an adaptive reward-inducing molecule that makes animals want to look for food before they're hungry. It's what makes it impossible for some people to pass by the neighborhood bakery without going in to buy a tart. And it provides a rush for heroin addicts when they see blood enter the needle -- before the drug even gets into their veins.

In its groundbreaking combination of techniques, Huron said, the study also offers a new way to study the relationship between dopamine and feelings of motivation, reward and pleasure. Brain scanners are notoriously expensive for scientists and claustrophobic for participants, with no room for people to do things like eat in them.

Music, on the other hand, can be pumped right in to the machine, and scientists can then look at pleasure responses on a note-by-note basis.

"Music is going to be a useful tool in trying to explain all sorts of aspects of pleasure, addiction and maladaptive behaviors," Huron said. "It's a technical tour de force what they've done. I just think it's a really wonderful piece of work."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FufeI...eature=related


http://news.discovery.com/human/musi...in-110110.html

This studies are nice and all, but somehow I always think they're getting cause and effect mixed up. Music just happens to release dopamine, and that is why its been so important to humanity for so long? Seems to me like there is a more fundamental essence to it and the dopamine is just a side effect.

Humans are internally connected to music biologically through the heart beat, electrical impulses of the brain, air waves against the ear drum, etc. It is physically part of what we are. Our species picked up on this thousands of years ago. Music has been used from the beginning of man's earliest days in one form or another.

I feel a extremely deep connection to music, and always have. I picked up any and all instruments i could when i was young. I always felt a natural bonding to making noise, regardless of the noise being made. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/smiley.gif

I couldnt live without writing/playing music. It is more important than food, water and air. Food, water and air will only keep me alive, but music gives me life.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgqItiTeYjI

why are words aesthetically pleasing
why does food taste good
why is that person handsome
why do we like to hold hands
why does pain make me cry
LOL... http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...s/rolleyes.gif

Music is not just a relatively safe opiate but a weapon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_8dafLxLcI

A deaf couple I knew once, had a larger collection of music than I did.

Pro musicians develop a sardonic attitude and often view the whole affair as a darkish comedy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXDED...eature=related
Victor Borge was one of the giants of classical music comedy.

Serpo, Americans and now even Europeans have adapted a utilitarian attitude towards music, they view it as a safe antidepressant/narcotic/viagra.
Music is many things besides that. It can speak of deepest pain too.
Most pop music is satanic garbage that is pumped into our skulls 24/7 by TPTB.
The societal changes of the last 100 yrs can be directly traced to the influence of progressively rotten pop music.
Real music such as classical,folk, jazz, etc is the single best tool of connecting us to our ancestors.
Also, music is the greatest lie detector/psychological profiling tool.
I can tell everything about a person by analyzing his/her musical taste.
PS. Music is a cutthroat business,make no mistake about it. When pro musicians talk, we hardly ever talk about music. The main topic is music business /finances. Pro musicians hardly even listen to music, they either practice/perform or rest by doing things completely unrelated to music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1QJwHWvgP8

Berlioz exhilarates and inspires me.
Nielsen makes me feel adventurous.
Gliere makes me dream of ancient days long past.
Bruckner moves my thoughts towards GOD.
Copland leaves me cold and parched.
Respighi fills my minds eye with vivid colors.
Stravinsky makes my heart race and my legs restless.
Bartok turns on every synapse in my brain and intoxicates my mentation.


Music...the civilized human's recreational drug of choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeQiei1jsJc

My favorite piece of music of all time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6txOvK-mAk

What does it mean if music makes me sad?

The set list i play ALWAYS has more sad than happy songs...it makes me feel and think n=more than so called happy music.

Your underwear is too tight, i would suggest not wearing any for a spell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-DWkUMx2qg

The vibrational frequencies are pleasant to my hear-holes.

You either have the blues, or you are listening to the blues. Either way, it's OK.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWUu7sUyMPE

One of the main reasons that I love trance is the beat connects to the heart beat of your soul and makes things all better. When done right there is no need for words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIBqFtdpxJs