Musical anhedonia is an inability to feel pleasure from listening to music. Between three and five percent of people report apathy toward music. Neuroscience evidence indicates that reward experiences rely on both overall reward-system functioning and specific perceptual-to-reward network interactions. Observed disconnection between auditory regions that process music and reward-related brain areas can explain why some individuals derive no pleasure from music. Ongoing research aims to determine the relative contributions of genetic factors and cultural conditioning to specific musical anhedonia and to map the brain-network mechanisms underlying music-linked reward.
Whether it's Bach's Cello Suites, Kendrick Lamar lyrically skewering Drake or the avant-garde work made by Merzbow, music is something that a lot of people find eminent pleasure in listening to. "A lot of people" isn't the same thing as "everyone," though, and a paper published this month in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences expanded our knowlege of a condition called "musical anhedonia."
Besides being a great name for an album, musical anhedonia refers to an inability to feel pleasure as a result of listening to music. In a 2017 article for The Atlantic, Divya Abhat reported that between three and five percent of the world's population experience "an apathy toward music." This more recent paper ventures into the neuroscience of it all - namely, why certain brains get nothing whatsoever out of music.
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