Hypothesizing Music Intervention Enhances Brain Functional Connectivity Involving Dopaminergic Recruitment: Common Neuro-correlates to Abusable Drugs

Abstract

The goal of this review is to explore the clinical significance of music listening on neuroplasticity and dopaminergic activation by understanding the role of music therapy in addictive behavior treatment. fMRI data has shown that music listening intensely modifies mesolimbic structural changes responsible for reward processing (e.g., nucleus accumbens [NAc]) and may control the emotional stimuli’s effect on autonomic and physiological responses (e.g., hypothalamus). Music listening has been proven to induce the endorphinergic response blocked by naloxone, a common opioid antagonist. NAc opioid transmission is linked to the ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine release. There are remarkable commonalities between listening to music and the effect of drugs on mesolimbic dopaminergic activation. It has been found that musical training before the age of 7 results in changes in white-matter connectivity, protecting carriers with low dopaminergic function (DRD2A1 allele, etc.) from poor decision-making, reward dependence, and impulsivity. In this article, we briefly review a few studies on the neurochemical effects of music and propose that these findings are relevant to the positive clinical findings observed in the literature. We hypothesize that music intervention enhances brain white matter plasticity through dopaminergic recruitment and that more research is needed to explore the efficacy of these therapies.

The song of Anorexia Nervosa: a specific evoked potential response to musical stimuli in affected participants

“…This would be consistent with the evidence of alterations in the functional limbic circuits involved in the processing of emotional information in anorexia nervosa [50]. A previous reports suggests that, in healthy subjects, musical stimuli produce an intense activation of the reward system at the limbic level [51]. Recent evidence ascribes this action to the recruitment of the accumbens nuclei [52], an area involved in the pathogenesis of affective manifestations of patients with AN [53].…”

A Review of the Clinical Evidence for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Huntington’s Disease

“…13 Physiological studies have demonstrated increased limbic activity in the orbitofrontal cortex and alterations in mesolimbic dopamine release on functional MRI (fMRI) in response to music. 14 In HD, music may have the potential to address abnormal movements as well as quality-of-life issues that arise from the loss of expressive and communicative skills, especially in advanced disease.…”

Effects of Mantra Meditation versus Music Listening on Knee Pain, Function, and Related Outcomes in Older Adults with Knee Osteoarthritis: An Exploratory Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT)

“…These alterations may, in turn, lead to a reduction in the central pain sensitization and hyperalgesia associated with OA [ 166 – 168 ]. For example, emerging evidence suggests that both meditation and ML can induce beneficial changes in central nervous system dopaminergic and other neurochemical systems [ 169 – 171 ] and enhance autonomic regulation, in part by modulating activation of the sympathoadrenal system and HPA axis and by increasing parasympathetic dominance [ 165 , 172 , 173 ]. In addition, recent controlled trials of ML and meditation suggest these practices can alter activity, increase grey matter density and/or volume, and promote functional connectivity in multiple brain areas involved in the cognitive, affective, and sensory processing of pain, including the periaqueductal grey matter, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, insula, amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, thalamus, somatosensory cortex, and anterior cingulate gyrus [ 157 , 158 , 163 – 165 , 172 , 174 – 180 ].…”