Listening to music makes you as happy as sex and food do--study

The so-called music therapy has shown promise in some earlier studies, showing a profound effect on human body and psyche.

Music’s pleasurable effects
Taking the music therapy’s findings further, McGill University researchers have discovered that listening to music, be it rock, jazz, or classical, releases feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain that plays a key role in setting good moods.

The chemical called dopamine is released at moments of peak enjoyment, the researchers found.

This is the first time the "reward" chemical dopamine, which has been linked to addiction, is tested in response to music, the researchers said.

The study by neuroscientist Robert Zatorre and colleagues at the Montreal Neurological Institute suggests that music generates the same pleasure-reward system in the brain as food, sex, and illicit drugs.

"Music has such deep roots in the brain that it engages this biologically ancient system," says Zatorre, explaining how dopamine triggers the sensation of pleasure in the striatum, a primitive region deep in the brain.

Study details
To reach their findings, Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal asked participants to listen to music and to press a button when they felt the thrilling effects known as “chills”.

All the participants either listed to a favorite selection of instrumental music they brought in themselves or to a selection of music they hadn't selected, as the researchers believed voices aren't necessary to produce the dopamine response.

To confirm the dopamine’s association with musical highs, the researchers monitored participants' heart and breathing rates, temperatures, and other physical responses while they listed to the music, which ranged from techno to folk to classical.

Study findings
The study subjects also underwent two different types of scans, which were when analyzed, enabling the researchers to estimate dopamine release.

After analyzing the scans, Zatorre and Salimpoor found that dopamine release was greatest when listeners had a strong emotional response to music, according to Sify.com.

"If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued," the researchers said.

"These results further speak to why music can be effectively used in rituals, marketing or film to manipulate hedonic states.

"Our findings provide neurochemical evidence that intense emotional responses to music involve ancient reward circuitry and serve as a starting point for more detailed investigations of the biological substrates that underlie abstract forms of pleasure," they added.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.