Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music

Abstract

Understanding how the brain translates a structured sequence of sounds, such as music, into a pleasant and rewarding experience is a fascinating question which may be crucial to better understand the processing of abstract rewards in humans. Previous neuroimaging findings point to a challenging role of the dopaminergic system in music-evoked pleasure. However, there is a lack of direct evidence showing that dopamine function is causally related to the pleasure we experience from music. We addressed this problem through a double blind within-subject pharmacological design in which we directly manipulated dopaminergic synaptic availability while healthy participants (n = 27) were engaged in music listening. We orally administrated to each participant a dopamine precursor (levodopa), a dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo (lactose) in three different sessions. We demonstrate that levodopa and risperidone led to opposite effects in measures of musical pleasure and motivation: while the dopamine precursor levodopa, compared with placebo, increased the hedonic experience and music-related motivational responses, risperidone led to a reduction of both. This study shows a causal role of dopamine in musical pleasure and indicates that dopaminergic transmission might play different or additive roles than the ones postulated in affective processing so far, particularly in abstract cognitive activities.

Musical anhedonia and rewards of music listening: current advances and a proposed model

“…While this work indirectly investigates the role of dopamine in musical pleasure, pharmacological studies have been used to directly manipulate dopaminergic function during music listening. Ferreri and colleagues administered a dopamine precursor (levodopa), a dopamine antagonist (risperidone), or placebo (lactose) to participants prior to listening to music . After receiving the drug or placebo, participants listened to experimenter‐ and self‐selected music while continuously rating the pleasure they experienced.…”

“…Ferreri and colleagues administered a dopamine precursor (levodopa), a dopamine antagonist (risperidone), or placebo (lactose) to participants prior to listening to music. 57 After receiving the drug or placebo, participants listened to experimenter-and self-selected music while continuously rating the pleasure they experienced. Additionally, participants completed an auction task, where they indicated whether or not they would purchase the music with their own money.…”

Dopaminergic signalling modulates reward-driven music memory consolidation

“…Among abstract reinforcers, music has received special attention in recent years as a powerful vector for studying pleasure. Music-induced pleasure relies on the activity of core reward regions within the mesolimbic dopaminergic system (Blood and Zatorre, 2001;Salimpoor et al, 2011Salimpoor et al, , 2013Koelsch, 2014;Mas-Herrero et al, 2018;Ferreri et al, 2019). Both theoretical considerations and recent experimental findings suggest that music represents a learning challenge by itself-triggered by the presence and violation of musical regularities-and that reward-related activations induced by music may be driven by the intrinsic value of successfully anticipating potential musical surprises (Koelsch et a., 2019;Gold et al, 2019;Cheung et al, 2019).…”

“…We addressed these questions through a double-blind, within-subject pharmacological design in which we directly manipulated synaptic dopamine availability. Participants listened to unfamiliar music excerpts after orally ingesting a dopamine precursor (levodopa), a dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo across three sessions (same participants and methodology as in Ferreri et al, 2019 andRipollés et al, 2018). In contrast to methylphenidate and d-amphetamines, levodopa does not indiscriminately enhance tonic dopamine levels but is rather rapidly taken up by dopaminergic neurons, transformed into dopamine, and stored in vesicles.…”

“…Levodopa and risperidone were chosen specifically for their capacity to displace the dopaminergic physiological system from this baseline, and in opposite directions: risperidone reduces the effects of dopamine release, while levodopa enhances dopaminergic neurotransmission. As the aim was to bring the dopaminergic system away from its baseline state, our analyses directly compare the risperidone and levodopa data against each other by using the placebo session as a baseline (i.e., we present all data as the percentage of change from placebo, as in Ferreri et al, 2019 andRipollés et al, 2018). Music-reward responses were measured by asking participants to provide subjective pleasure ratings after each musical excerpt.…”