Ever-changing cycles of musical pleasure: The role of dopamine and anticipation.

Abstract

Music listening is highly pleasurable and important part of most people's lives. Because music has no obvious importance for survival, the ubiquity of music remains puzzling and the brain processes underlying this attraction to music are not well understood. Like other rewards (such as food, sex, and money), pleasurable music activates structures in the dopaminergic reward system, but how music manages to tap into the brain's reward system is less clear. Here we propose a novel framework for understanding musical pleasure, suggesting that music conforms to the recent concept of pleasure cycles with phases of "wanting/expectation," "liking," and "learning." We argue that expectation is fundamental to musical pleasure, and that music can be experienced as pleasurable both when it fulfills and violates expectations. Dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain represent expectations and violations of expectations (prediction errors) in response to "rewards'" and "alert/incentive salience signals." We argue that the human brain treats music as an alert/incentive salience signal, and suggest that the activity of dopamine neurons represents aspects of the phases of musical expectation and musical learning, but not directly the phase of music liking. Finally, we propose a computational model for understanding musical anticipation and pleasure operationalized through the recent theory of predictive coding.

Pleasurable and Intersubjectively Embodied Experiences of Electronic Dance Music

“…Some studies have found that music is associated with the release of dopamine via the brain's reward system, in the same way that food, sex, and money are (Blood & Zatorre, 2001;Gebauer, Kringelbach, Vuust, Cohen, & Stewart, 2012;Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011). Perhaps, then, we experience music as pleasurable when our musical expectations are either fulfilled or violated, and dopamine release may occur in anticipation of this reward (Gebauer et al, 2012;Salimpoor et al, 2011).…”

“…Some studies have found that music is associated with the release of dopamine via the brain's reward system, in the same way that food, sex, and money are (Blood & Zatorre, 2001;Gebauer, Kringelbach, Vuust, Cohen, & Stewart, 2012;Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011). Perhaps, then, we experience music as pleasurable when our musical expectations are either fulfilled or violated, and dopamine release may occur in anticipation of this reward (Gebauer et al, 2012;Salimpoor et al, 2011). Related sensations are often described as chills, goose bumps, or shivers, and they seem to correspond to sudden and unexpected changes or gradual expansions in the dynamics, texture, structure, tempo, and volume of the musical sound (see, for example, Blood & Zatorre, 2001;Gomez & Danuser, 2007;Grewe, Kopiez, & Altenmüller, 2009;Guhn, Hamm, & Zentner, 2007;Juslin & Västfjäll, 2008;Panksepp, 1995;Rickard, 2004).…”

Mental Representations in Musical Processing and their Role in Action-Perception Loops

“…Data supporting these ideas have been presented for pitch perception (Kumar et al, 2011), processing rhythmic incongruities (Vuust, Ostergaard, Johanne, Bailey, & Roepstorff, 2009) but also emotional responses to music (Gebauer, Kringelbach, & Vuust, 2012;Vuust & Frith 2008). The strength of the predictive processing framework as presented by Clark (2013) is that it supports the existence of a multitude of levels or dimensions on which hierarchical predictions are formed simultaneously.…”

Commentary on: Solberg and Jensenius (2016) Investigation of 'intersubjectively embodied experience' in a controlled electronic dance music setting

“…Second, peak pleasure sensations are experienced when musical expectations are fulfilled or violated, relating to sudden changes in the dynamics, texture and tempo of music (e.g. Huron, 2006, Gebauer, Kringelbach, Vuust, Cohen & Stewart, 2012, but the role of anticipation and expectation in pleasurable responses to EDM has not received sufficient attention. Third, research has demonstrated links between enjoyment of music and movement (e.g.…”