14 DAY TRIAL // Until recently, it was thought that all people were experiencing a great deal of pleasure listening to music, but it turns out that some are completely immune to its vibes.
A new study has revealed that there are some people in the world who simply don't like music, but are perfectly able to experience pleasure in other ways. The new condition was discovered by scientist Josep Marco-Pallares and has been named musical anhedonia.
“The identification of these individuals could be very important to understanding how a set of notes is translated into emotions,” the scientist said.
The absence of enjoyment of music has been considered until now a mental defect. However, the theory that music is a universal characteristic has been challenged by this new study, as participants who reported not to derive pleasure from music still tested healthy in mind and body.
For the recent empirical test, researchers at the University of Barcelona and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute used three groups of 10 people each. Each group was mixed, as it included participants who displayed high sensitivity to music, an average appreciation, and low appreciation.
The participants did two different tests. One was a music test, where participants had to rate the degree of pleasure they were experiencing while listening to pleasant music, like Simon & Garfunkel's “Bridge over Troubled Water.” As they listened, experts measured the participants' heart rate and skin for reactions.
The other test was a questionnaire, in which subjects had to respond quickly to a target in order to win or avoid losing real money. This test measured risk and reward.
The results were really surprising. People with low sensitivity to music showed no autonomic responses to the music, despite normal capacities when it comes to musical perception. So, the research made clear that some healthy and happy people simply do not enjoy music and show no autonomic response to it.
However, these people responded to monetary rewards, which suggests that low sensitivity to music has no connection to some abnormality in their reward network.
“Some otherwise healthy and happy people do not enjoy music and show no autonomic responses to its sound, despite normal musical perception capacities. Those people do respond to monetary rewards, which shows that low sensitivity to music isn't tied to some global abnormality of the reward network,” read the findings published in the most recent issue of Current Biology.