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

Abstract

Music frequently elicits intense emotional responses, a phenomenon that has been scrutinized from multiple disciplines that span the sciences and arts. While most people enjoy music and find it rewarding, there is substantial individual variability in the experience and degree of music‐induced reward. Here, we review current work on the neural substrates of hedonic responses to music. In particular, we focus the present review on specific musical anhedonia, a selective lack of pleasure from music. Based on evidence from neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and brain stimulation studies, we derive a neuroanatomical model of the experience of pleasure during music listening. Our model posits that hedonic responses to music are the result of connectivity between structures involved in auditory perception as a predictive process, and those involved in the brain's dopaminergic reward system. We conclude with open questions and implications of this model for future research on why humans appreciate music.

Resting-State Connectivity of Auditory and Reward Systems in Alzheimer’s Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment

“…This result has important implications. First, it supports the neuroanatomical model for the reward of music listening and music-based interventions, as laid out in Belfi and Loui ( 2020 ), which posits that the anterior insula is connected to both auditory and reward systems. This finding is also consistent with lesion mapping studies: cases of acquired musical anhedonia (i.e., the lack of emotional responses to music due to brain injury) mostly have lesions in the anterior insula (Griffiths et al, 2004 ; Satoh et al, 2011 ).…”

“…Then, we selected 18 ROIs as valuation and reward-related regions based on the previous literature (Belfi and Loui, 2020 ): right Insular Cortex (InsulaR), left Insular Cortex (InsulaL), Anterior Cingulate Gyrus (AC), Posterior Cingulate Gyrus (PC), right Frontal Orbital Cortex (FOrbR), left Frontal Orbital Cortex (FOrbL), right Caudate (CaudateR), left Caudate (CaudateL), right Putamen (PutamenR), left Putamen (PutamenL), right Pallidum (PallidumR), left Pallidum (PallidumL), right Hippocampus (HippocampusR), left Hippocampus (HippocampusL), right Amygdala (AmygdalaR), left Amygdala (AmygdalaL), right Accumbens (AccumbensR), left Accumbens (AccumbensL).…”

“…Findings from structural neuroimaging have linked white matter connectivity between auditory and reward-related areas, specifically the posterior superior temporal gyrus to the anterior insula and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), to individual differences in reward sensitivity to music (Sachs et al, 2016 ; Loui et al, 2017 ; Martínez-Molina et al, 2019 ). These findings suggest that there is a neuroanatomical network that is known to be involved in deriving rewards from music listening (Belfi and Loui, 2020 ). Altogether, these two networks are well associated with behavioral data supporting their roles in the emotional processing of music.…”

Integrating music-based interventions with Gamma-frequency stimulation: Implications for healthy aging

“…A second neurobiological mechanism that might underlie the efficacy of MBIs is the coupling between auditory and reward systems in the brain (Belfi and Loui 2020;Diana Wang et al 2020). Pleasurable responses to music are associated with increased activity in the neural structures of the dopamine system involved in reward and emotion processing, such as the caudate, nucleus accumbens, insula, and amygdala (Blood and Zatorre 2001;Salimpoor et al 2011;Menon and Levitin 2005;Blood et al 1999).…”

Dopaminergic signalling modulates reward-driven music memory consolidation

“…The rationale for this split is twofold. First, reward-related behavioral and physiological responses to music are modulated by musical hedonia, as are the structure and function of core reward-related brain regions (Brattico and Pearce, 2013;Mas-Herrero et al, 2013Martinez-Molina et al, 2016Belfi and Loui, 2019;Ferreri et al, 2019;Gold et al, 2019). Second, and most importantly, memory effects driven by dopamine in the context of intrinsic or abstract reward are highly dependent upon individual differences in reward sensitivity: the higher participants' hedonia, the higher the memory and learning performance (Ripollés et al, 2018;Ferreri et al, 2017).…”