Scientists have revealed the secret of people who don't like music

Ten years ago, scientists discovered a rare condition – specific musical anhedonia, in which a person does not experience joy from music, although other sources of pleasure (food, money, communication) remain attractive to him. A new study published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences reveals the neurobiological mechanisms of this phenomenon.

To diagnose the condition, scientists developed a special questionnaire that assessed five aspects of music perception. People with musical anhedonia showed low results on all items. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies supported the idea that specific musical anhedonia is caused by a disruption in the connection between brain regions.

People with the condition are able to perceive and process musical melodies, meaning their auditory neural connections are normal — they just don’t enjoy them. When listening to music, people with musical anhedonia have reduced activity in their reward circuitry — the part of the brain that processes rewards, including food, sex, and art — but maintain normal activity levels in response to other rewarding stimuli, such as winning money, indicating that their reward circuitry is also intact.

The lack of pleasure from music is explained by a breakdown in the connection between the reward system and the auditory network, and not by the functioning of the reward system itself, the scientists concluded. The authors of the study also believe that similar mechanisms may underlie other forms of anhedonia, such as food or social. In the future, this may help in studying addiction, depression, and eating disorders. The team is currently working on finding genes associated with musical anhedonia and checking whether this condition can be corrected.