Musical anhedonia, timbre, and the rewards of music listening

Kathios, Nicholas; Patel, Aniruddh D.; Loui, Psyche

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105672

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Nine participants were removed prior to data analysis because of missing data, specifically in response to the initial 34 Music@Home -Retrospective items (see Table 1 for demographic information of the 290 participants included in our Study 1 analyses). Participants were recruited from a sample who participated in a previous online study run by members of our lab (Kathios et al, 2024) through the online software Prolific.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music@Home - Retrospective: A New Measure to Retrospectively Assess Childhood Home Musical Environments

Lopez

Kathios²,

Gabard-Durnam³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Home musical environments impact the development of complex abilities. While longitudinal studies on the effect of home musical environments on lifelong outcomes may be resource-intensive, retrospective reports are a relatively quick and inexpensive way to collect data. We present the Music@Home – Retrospective scale, derived partly from the Music@Home – Preschool scale (Politimou et al., 2018) to retrospectively assess the childhood home musical environment. In two studies (total n = 542), we conducted an exploratory factor analysis (Study 1) and confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2) on items adapted from the Music@Home – Preschool scale, revealing a five-factor solution. Along with correlations with musical training, items that were retained for three factors (Caregiver Beliefs, Caregiver Initiation of Singing, Child Engagement with Music) loaded identically to three in the original Music@Home Scale, suggesting construct validity. We also established construct validity for two novel factors: the Attitude towards Childhood Home Musical Environment factor significantly negatively correlated with measures of childhood adversity, and the Social Listening Contexts factor was significantly positively correlated with music-related social reward. Overall, the Music@Home-Retrospective scale enables future investigations of two previously undefined aspects of the home musical environment and offers an entry point into long-term effects of early music engagement on cognitive health and socioemotional well-being.

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Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music@Home - Retrospective: A New Measure to Retrospectively Assess Childhood Home Musical Environments

Lopez

Kathios²,

Gabard-Durnam³

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Responses on the extended Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (eBMRQ; [ 11 , 12 ]) show that musical reward is multi-dimensional, typically falling into six factors: sensorimotor reward (moving to music), social reward (sharing music with others), music-seeking (finding new music), emotion evocation, mood regulation, and absorption into music. While most people find music to be rewarding in these ways, people with musical anhedonia report an insensitivity to the rewards of music listening across these dimensions [ 13 , 14 ]. Specific musical anhedonia is defined as a selective lack of pleasurable responses to music, despite normal hedonic responses to other sensory and aesthetic stimuli, as well as normal auditory perceptual abilities [ 15 – 17 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictive coding in musical anhedonia: A study of groove

Benson,

Kathios,

Loui

2024

PLoS ONE

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Groove, or the pleasurable urge to move to music, offers unique insight into the relationship between emotion and action. The predictive coding of music model posits that groove is linked to predictions of music formed over time, with stimuli of moderate complexity rated as most pleasurable and likely to engender movement. At the same time, listeners vary in the pleasure they derive from music listening: individuals with musical anhedonia report reduced pleasure during music listening despite no impairments in music perception and no general anhedonia. Little is known about musical anhedonics’ subjective experience of groove. Here we examined the relationship between groove and music reward sensitivity. Participants (n = 287) heard drum-breaks that varied in perceived complexity, and rated each for pleasure and wanting to move. Musical anhedonics (n = 13) had significantly lower ratings compared to controls (n = 13) matched on music perception abilities and general anhedonia. However, both groups demonstrated the classic inverted-U relationship between ratings of pleasure & move and stimulus complexity, with ratings peaking for intermediately complex stimuli. Across our entire sample, pleasure ratings were most strongly related with music reward sensitivity for highly complex stimuli (i.e., there was an interaction between music reward sensitivity and stimulus complexity). Finally, the sensorimotor subscale of music reward was uniquely associated with move, but not pleasure, ratings above and beyond the five other dimensions of musical reward. Results highlight the multidimensional nature of reward sensitivity and suggest that pleasure and wanting to move are driven by overlapping but separable mechanisms.

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Distinct genetic pathways to music enjoyment

Bignardi,

Wesseldijk,

Mas-Herrero

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Humans engage with music for various reasons that range from emotional regulation and relaxation to social bonding. While there are large inter-individual differences in how much humans enjoy music, little is known about the origins of those differences. Here, we disentangled the genetic factors underlying such variation. We collected behavioural data on several facets of music reward sensitivity, music perceptual ability, and general reward sensitivity from a large sample of Swedish twins (N = 9,169). We found that genetic factors substantially explain variance in music reward sensitivity above and beyond genetic influences shared with music perception and general reward sensitivity. Furthermore, multivariate analyses showed that genetic influences on the different facets of music reward sensitivity are partly distinct, uncovering distinct pathways to music enjoyment and different patterns of genetic associations with objectively assessed music perceptual abilities. These results paint a complex picture in which partially distinct sources of genetic variation contribute to different aspects of musical enjoyment and open up new possibilities for using inter-individual differences to gain insights into the biology of a key aspect of human behaviour.

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Musical anhedonia, timbre, and the rewards of music listening

Cited by 3 publications

References 45 publications

Music@Home - Retrospective: A New Measure to Retrospectively Assess Childhood Home Musical Environments

Music@Home - Retrospective: A New Measure to Retrospectively Assess Childhood Home Musical Environments

Predictive coding in musical anhedonia: A study of groove

Distinct genetic pathways to music enjoyment

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