Have you ever wondered why that new song you enjoyed hearing that new song on the radio? This recent study shows that there are four regions of our brain responsible for pleasure while listening to music. The main region is called the nucleus accumbensand is located in the “reward center” of the brain. This region is responsible for making predictions and when the prediction your brain makes is correct it releases feel-good chemicals. Along with guessing correctly pleasant surprises also cause this region to release those same chemicals. The other three regions look for patterns, compare the sounds to other sounds you have heard before, and link emotional ties within the song. This study took the brain activity of 19 people who were listening to music in an MRI machine. They were then asked whether they would like to buy the song they were listening to and there was a direct correlation between how much a person was willing to spend on a song and how much the nucleus accumbens was stimulated. This can lead to further investigation on how the brain deciphers complex sounds such as speech.
Photo taken by Ferrari + caballos + fuerza = cerebro Humano
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biolabski
I think it’s really cool that scientists were able to link an everyday activity like listening to music to interactions within the brain. I didn’t know that music can trigger a dopamine release, which can also be done by drugs, eating chocolate, and having sex. It is also interesting that the MRI machine can pick up so much information about the brain. Here is a link to a website that shows how the MRI reads different emotions that are triggered in the brain: http://www.insidestory.iop.org/mri.html