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Intensely pleasurable responses to music correlate with activity in brain regions implicated in reward and emotion Anne J. Blood and Robert J. Zatorre Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2001 Sep 25; 98(20): 11818-11823 Abstract, Full text, and additional figures and tables The article's final paragraph: We have shown here that music recruits neural systems of reward and emotion similar to those known to respond specifically to biologically relevant stimuli, such as food and sex, and those that are artificially activated by drugs of abuse. This is quite remarkable, because music is neither strictly necessary for biological survival or reproduction, nor is it a pharmacological substance. Activation of these brain systems in response to a stimulus as abstract as music may represent an emergent property of the complexity of human cognition. Perhaps as formation of anatomical and functional links between phylogenically older, survival-related brain systems and newer, more cognitive systems increased our general capacity to assign meaning to abstract stimuli, our capacity to derive pleasure from these stimuli also increased. The ability of music to induce such intense pleasure and its putative stimulation of endogenous reward systems suggest that, although music may not be imperative for survival of the human species, it may indeed be of significant benefit to our mental and physical well-being. (Bold text emphasis by Martin Braun)Comment: Blood and Zatorre not only presented an extensively documented brain imaging study on the pleasure of music, they also point out the unique position of music as something that gives pleasure, or, in biological terms, reward. No other abstract sensory stimuli can have comparable effects. Not many, neither in music, nor in brain research, are aware of this. It will be a difficult task for a long time ahead to work out what type of "meaning" the brain can actually "assign" to music. Why can abstract temporal order have such a high value for the brain? The answers may lie in the basic laws of the brain themselves. (Comment Martin Braun) |