Dissociation between Musical and Monetary Reward Responses in Specific Musical Anhedonia

Abstract

Music has been present in all human cultures since prehistory [1, 2], although it is not associated with any apparent biological advantages (such as food, sex, etc.) or utility value (such as money). Nevertheless, music is ranked among the highest sources of pleasure [3], and its important role in our society and culture has led to the assumption that the ability of music to induce pleasure is universal. However, this assumption has never been empirically tested. In the present report, we identified a group of healthy individuals without depression or generalized anhedonia who showed reduced behavioral pleasure ratings and no autonomic responses to pleasurable music, despite having normal musical perception capacities. These persons showed preserved behavioral and physiological responses to monetary reward, indicating that the low sensitivity to music was not due to a global hypofunction of the reward network. These results point to the existence of specific musical anhedonia and suggest that there may be individual differences in access to the reward system.

Neural correlates of specific musical anhedonia

“…In the first session, participants engaged in a music listening task, similar to the task used by MasHerrero et al (4). They had to listen to 32 previously rated musical excerpts (10 pleasant, 10 neutral, 10 unpleasant, and 2 pleasant excerpts selected by the participant).…”

“…Upon completion of this round, we selected 45 participants who scored within the normal range on these scales and presented normal SCR levels. We classified participants in three groups of 15 people according to their overall BMRQ scores: those individuals scoring equal to or lower than 65 were included in the ANH group, those individuals scoring higher than 65 but lower than 87 were included in the HDN group, and those individuals scoring higher than 87 were included in the HHDN group [adapted from Mas-Herrero et al (4)]. The three groups were matched in these three measures (PAS, MBEA, and SPSRQ) but differentiated in the BMRQ [overall scores averaged between the BMRQ overall score available from the first round of participant selection and the score from the BMRQ completed in the laboratory during the SCR session (Table 1)].…”

“…Paradoxically, not everybody loves music: A small percentage of healthy individuals do not find music pleasurable, a phenomenon known as specific musical anhedonia (4). A detailed study on this population revealed that this phenomenon cannot be explained by perceptual problems [e.g., hearing impairment or specific impairment in perceptual capabilities, a condition known as amusia (5)] or by general anhedonia (lack of pleasure for all types of rewarding stimuli).…”

“…When listening to music rated as pleasant by others, people with specific musical anhedonia showed a reduced emotional arousal as indexed by autonomic nervous system activity [in particular, skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate measurements] compared with people having standard or high sensitivity to music. Notably, they showed normal responses to other types of reward [e.g., money (4)]. Therefore, individuals with specific musical anhedonia represent an ideal population in which to test models of music reward processing.…”

Pedagogical contributions of Arnold Schönberg composition’s method

“…El primero de los elementos, el perceptivo, tiene un carácter prácticamente universal, pues corresponde al ámbito del ser humano como organismo organizado de forma sensible, lo que nos permite establecer un carácter "denotativo" de las respuestas emocionales a estímulos sonoros (con excepción de la anhedonia musical, un raro fenómeno descubierto hace pocos años y que podría afectar a un 5 % de la población (Mas-Herrero et al, 2014)). Los dos últimos, el cognitivo y el sociocultural, promueven cierta connotación, un valor personal y contextual único que plantea una necesaria interpretación de los elementos emocionales como símbolo (Gusdorf, 1977;Gustems y Calderón, 2016).…”