PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Disconnection between brain regions explains why some people don’t enjoy music

2025-08-07
(Press-News.org) Ten years ago, researchers discovered a small group of people who derive no pleasure from music despite having normal hearing and the ability to enjoy other experiences or stimuli. The condition, “specific musical anhedonia,” is caused by a disconnect between the brain’s auditory and reward networks. In a paper publishing August 7 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, the team that discovered specific musical anhedonia describes the brain mechanisms behind the condition and discusses how understanding it could reveal other differences in how people experience pleasure and joy.   

“A similar mechanism could underlie individual differences in responses to other rewarding stimuli,” says author and neuroscientist Josep Marco-Pallarés of the University of Barcelona. “Investigating these circuits could pave the way for new research on individual differences and reward-related disorders such as anhedonia, addiction, or eating disorders.” 

To identify musical anhedonia, the team developed a tool called the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) that measures how rewarding a person finds music. The questionnaire examines five different ways in which music can be rewarding: by evoking emotion; by helping regulate mood; by fostering social connections; through dance or movement; and as something novel to seek, collect, or experience. People with musical anhedonia generally score low on all five aspects of the BMRQ. 

Behavioral and brain imaging studies have both supported the idea that specific musical anhedonia is due to a disconnection between brain regions. People with the condition can perceive and process musical melodies, meaning that their auditory brain circuits are intact—they simply don’t derive pleasure from doing so. Similarly, fMRI scans show that when listening to music, people with musical anhedonia have reduced activity in the reward circuit—the part of the brain that processes rewards including food, sex, and art—but a normal level of activity in response to other rewarding stimuli, such as winning money, indicating that their reward circuit is also intact. 

“This lack of pleasure for music is explained by disconnectivity between the reward circuit and the auditory network—not by the functioning of their reward circuit, per se,” says Marco-Pallarés. 

“If the reward circuit is not working well, you get less pleasure from all kinds of rewards,” says author and neuroscientist Ernest Mas-Herrero of the University of Barcelona. “Here, what we point out is that it might be not only the engagement of this circuitry that is important but also how it interacts with other brain regions that are relevant for the processing of each reward type.” 

Why people develop the condition is still unclear, but studies have shown that genetics and environment could both play a role. A recently published study in twins shows that genetic effects could be responsible for up to 54% of how much an individual enjoys music.  

Even among healthy people, there is a lot of variation in how responsive people are to rewards, but research into specific reward types is relatively rare given that most research into the reward circuit has assumed that reward responsiveness is an all-or-nothing phenomenon—which is not the case. 

“We propose that using our methodology to study other reward types could yield the discovery of other specific anhedonias,” says Marco-Pallarés. “It’s possible, for instance, that people with specific food anhedonia may have some deficit in the connectivity between brain regions involved in food processing and the reward circuitry.” 

The team is currently collaborating with geneticists to identify specific genes that might be involved in specific musical anhedonia. They also plan to investigate whether the condition is a stable trait or something that changes throughout life—and whether musical anhedonia or other similar conditions can be reversed.  

### 

This research was supported by funding from the European Regional Development Fund, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Government of Catalonia, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Fondation pour l’Audition, Paris. 

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Mas-Herrero et al., “Understanding individual differences to specific rewards through music”  https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(25)00178-0

Trends in Cognitive Sciences (@TrendsCognSci), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that brings together research in psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and neuroscience. It provides a platform for the interaction of these disciplines and the evolution of cognitive science as an independent field of study. Visit: http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.   

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

An interstellar mission to a black hole? Astrophysicist thinks it’s possible.

2025-08-07
It sounds like science fiction: a spacecraft, no heavier than a paperclip, propelled by a laser beam and hurtling through space at the speed of light toward a black hole, on a mission to probe the very fabric of space and time and test the laws of physics. But to astrophysicist and black hole expert Cosimo Bambi, the idea is not so far-fetched.    Reporting in the Cell Press journal iScience, Bambi outlines the blueprint for turning this interstellar voyage to a black hole into a reality. If successful, this century-long mission could return data from nearby ...

Earth’s natural CO2 vacuum cleaners

2025-08-07
Natural weathering processes are removing CO2 from the air in a wide range of environments across continents and ocean. Until recently these ‘CO2 vacuum cleaners’ were often studied separately, without properly examining their complex interactions. Now, an international team of earth scientists is proposing an integrated vision of the many factors that influence the removal of atmospheric CO2 from the highest mountain peaks to the deep ocean floor, including their various interactions. The so-called weathering continuum provides a much more complete picture on what controls and regulates the natural removal of CO2, which could ...

It's not all about size

2025-08-07
To the point Power relationships between female and male gorillas: They are less strictly male-biased than previously thought. Females can overpower males despite the extreme male-biases in size and strength. Revisiting traditional gender narratives: Females that overpower males have priority of access to food over these males, challenging the traditional narrative that females and males compete over different resources (females  over food and males over females). Over 50 years ago, the idea that males had universal ...

Cost-effectiveness of 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccination in US adults

2025-08-07
About The Study: In this modeling study, economic favorability of COVID-19 vaccination varied by age. Cost-effectiveness results for individuals in the 2 older age groups were favorable and generally robust to changes in parameter inputs, while results for the younger age group were sensitive to parameter input changes. As the evidence base for COVID-19 vaccination and burden of illness evolves, it may be important to continue to update and revise the economic evaluation of vaccination. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices considered these results in its decision to recommend vaccination with the 2023 to 2024 COVID-19 mRNA ...

Demographics, lifestyle, comorbidities, prediabetes, and mortality

2025-08-07
About The Study: Stratified analyses in this study revealed that prediabetes was significantly associated with mortality only among younger adults (ages 20-54), highlighting the importance of age-specific interventions. Lifestyle behaviors, limited health care access, and life stage challenges may contribute to the increased mortality risk in younger adults. Early-onset health problems in this group may also reflect stronger genetic predispositions, leading to more rapid disease progression and more severe health outcomes. These findings underscore ...

Climate change: Perito Moreno Glacier retreat has recently accelerated substantially

2025-08-07
The Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina — often described as one of the most stable glaciers in Patagonia — is retreating far more rapidly than previously thought, according to a paper in Communications Earth & Environment. The results show that, over the last few years, the glacier has retreated by as much as 800 metres in some areas, and that it may collapse and retreat by several kilometres in the near future. The Perito Moreno Glacier is a 30-kilometre-long glacier in the Argentine Patagonia, fed by the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in the Andes and terminating in ...

Population history of the Southern Caucasus

2025-08-07
To the point Stable genetic ancestry: Despite significant cultural changes, populations in the Southern Caucasus have maintained remarkably constant genetic ancestry for over 5,000 years. Genetic contributions during the Bronze Age: Although local genetic continuity was predominant, there were partial genetic contributions from the Eurasian Steppe and from Anatolia during the Bronze Age. Cultural influences: Practices such as cranial deformation were adopted primarily through cultural influences, rather than solely through migration. New insights into the Southern Caucasus region: This research highlights the Southern Caucasus as ...

Biomarkers reveal risk of cardiovascular disease in type 2 diabetes

2025-08-07
Quick facts: Clinical research, 752 individuals with type 2 diabetes, quantitative study, DNA methylation as a way to identify epigenetic biomarkers in blood. People with type 2 diabetes are up to four times more likely to have heart attacks, strokes, anginas and other coronary heart diseases than healthy people. Therefore, biomarkers that help us understand which individuals are at risk of being affected are needed. A research team led from Lund University in Sweden, followed 752 people who, when the study started, were newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. ...

UVA harnesses AI to improve brain cancer care

2025-08-07
University of Virginia School of Medicine scientists are tapping the power of artificial intelligence to enhance and accelerate treatment for glioblastoma, the deadliest brain cancer. UVA researcher Bijoy Kundu, PhD, and colleagues are developing an AI imaging approach to distinguish between tumor progression and brain changes caused by tumor treatment. It now can take months to make that distinction, leaving doctors uncertain if the tumor is growing and stalling important care decisions. Kundu’s AI approach is already outperforming ...

MIT imaging tech promises deepest looks yet into living brain tissue at single-cell resolution

2025-08-07
Both for research and medical purposes, researchers have spent decades pushing the limits of microscopy to produce ever deeper and sharper images of brain activity, not only in the cortex but also in regions underneath such as the hippocampus. In a new study, a team of MIT scientists and engineers demonstrates a new microscope system capable of peering exceptionally deep into brain tissues to detect the molecular activity of individual cells by using sound. “The major advance here is to enable us to image deeper at single-cell resolution,” ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

New scaffold technology helps combat traumatic brain injury by restoring copper balance

Bone metastases cultivate immature immune cells to resist immunotherapy

Liming can help enhance carbon capture in agricultural fields

National study urges expanded vaccine screening in emergency departments

Simple color-changing sensor quickly identifies poisonous gases

Exosomes found to play a double role in tumor growth and immune response

Announcing Gordian Biotechnology as Tier 5 Sponsor of ARDD 2025

Disconnection between brain regions explains why some people don’t enjoy music

An interstellar mission to a black hole? Astrophysicist thinks it’s possible.

Earth’s natural CO2 vacuum cleaners

It's not all about size

Cost-effectiveness of 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccination in US adults

Demographics, lifestyle, comorbidities, prediabetes, and mortality

Climate change: Perito Moreno Glacier retreat has recently accelerated substantially

Population history of the Southern Caucasus

Biomarkers reveal risk of cardiovascular disease in type 2 diabetes

UVA harnesses AI to improve brain cancer care

MIT imaging tech promises deepest looks yet into living brain tissue at single-cell resolution

City of Hope Research Spotlight, July 2025

New experiment paves the way for secure, high-speed communication

Maple compound offers new way to fight tooth decay

Novel immunologic surveillance study provides new insights into post-pandemic return of respiratory viruses

New European guidelines reshape MASLD care with clearer diagnosis and targeted therapies

Adjuvant chemotherapy improves survival in resected early-onset pancreatic cancer after neoadjuvant therapy

Tech can tell exactly when in videos students are learning

Quantum freezing at room temperature

The first 25 years of SuperAger research

pH-responsive graphene-based nanocarriers: A breakthrough for cancer drug delivery

IBS in America: Despite advances, IBS remains a burden for many millions

Light up our love: Medaka courtship dynamics observed

[Press-News.org] Disconnection between brain regions explains why some people don’t enjoy music