Music is Dope(amine Producing)
For most of us, listening to music generally brings us joy. Even if it doesn’t for you, you probably have one or two songs that, when played, make you happy. I want you to now think about this song. One such song for me is September by Earth, Wind, & Fire. Now, try to think about why this song brings you joy. Maybe it is the memories tied to it, the upbeat message of the song, just how it sounds, or some other reason. However, you may not know the exact reason why a song brings you joy, especially if listening to a variety of music brings you pleasure. So now, the question is, what is something that music in general does to cause joy? This research question is being intensively studied, with various explanations. But, I am going to focus on one particular explanation: the dopamine release when listening to music.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, or more simply a chemical in the brain that plays a major role in pleasure and motivation. Dopamine is one of the chemicals released during sex, eating, and is modified by many party drugs. In order to understand how dopamine works, I first have to talk about neurons. Neurons are cells in the brain which communicate to one another to pass messages. Dopamine is one of the chemicals that some neurons use to communicate; dopamine is released by one neuron and taken in by another neuron. You can think of neurotransmitters as passing a note to a friend in class; the neurons are you and your friend and the paper that the note is written on is the neurotransmitter. The message in dopamine’s case is to be happy and motivated.
Recently, scientists have been examining the release of dopamine while listening to music. Researchers at the University of Barcelona in Spain, have been examining the causal effect of dopamine specifically. These researchers examined 27 participants listening to self-selected music and experimentally selected pop music (such as Katy Perry, One Direction, Taylor Swift, and other artists). The participants were tested at three different time periods (3 different conditions) with one week between each condition. In one condition, the participants were given the drug levodopa (L-dopa) which is turned into dopamine in one neuron, causing an increase in the amount of dopamine that is sent to communicate with the other neuron, theoretically increasing pleasure and motivation. The second condition is the drug risperidone which blocks the communication of neurons through dopamine, theoretically decreasing pleasure and motivation. The last condition is a placebo condition where participants received lactose to see more baseline effects and effects of partaking in the study. They measured pleasure through physiological measures of arousal such as chills and electrodermal activity (EDA), the current through your skin, as well as self-reported pleasure ratings. Motivation was measured by asking the participants how much money they were willing to spend for each song (I know this measure seems a little strange now since very few people still spend money on music).
When comparing participants to themselves at the different conditions, these researchers found that L-dopa increased the pleasantness, while risperidone decreased the pleasantness, both through physiological and self-reported measures. Additionally, participants were willing to spend more money when they had L-dopa and less money when they had risperidone compared to the placebo. This means when there was a greater dopamine communication, the music was more pleasant and greater musical motivation, and when there was less dopamine communication music was less pleasant and there was less musical motivation. Another important note is that the dopamine did not change any other parts of music perception. These findings indicates that dopamine causes the pleasantness intensity of music.
While this study is cool, and is a step towards understanding why music provides us with pleasure, it leaves about as many questions as it answers. Does the dopamine response only occur in pop music? Does sad music also produce the same effects? How does the personal preference music play a role in pleasure responses?
I speculate that sad music can also cause dopamine pleasure response in addition to pop music, since research shows that sad music has the potential improve mood. However, the dopamine effect of sad music has not been studied enough for me to present definitive answers from research. This is likely something that researchers will look into as the field moves forward. The one question that I can answer is the effect of personal preference. People are largely individualist in the types of music that they like. I know that my family and I all listen to different types of music, and I can tell I certainly don’t gain a lot of pleasure from my fourteen year old sisters music.
A study conducted at McGill University in Canada, looked at the dopamine release during various parts of music in general. They also found that dopamine was released more during the anticipation and peak emotional response to music. These researchers noticed that musical stimulus is perceived as pleasant based on the listener, not direct biological or chemical factors, and is specific to the individual’s preferences. These findings again confirm the role of dopamine in musical pleasantness. However, they also highlight the importance of individual preferences, so not all music will necessarily bring pleasure to all people.
There is still a lot that we don’t know about why music brings us pleasure, the dopamine reward system is just one possible explanation. It most likely is one part of multiple reasons that music brings us pleasure. While researchers continue to explore this area of research, I know I will continue to take pleasure in the joy that music, such as September by Earth Wind and Fire, brings me, and you should too.
References
Ferreri, L., Mas-Herreo, E., Zatorre, R., RipollEs, P., Gomez-Andres, A. Alicart, H.,…Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2019). Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(9), 3793–3798. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811878116
Salimpoor, V., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K. Dagher, A., Zatorre, R. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during the anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nat Neurosci, 14, 257–262. doi:10.1038/nn.2726
Tarufii, L., Koelsch, S. (2014). The paradox of music-evoked sadness: An online survey. PLoS ONE, 9(10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110490
