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A literature review has led researchers to propose a brain model which may help understand how people perceive reward experiences. They say it could depend not only on the function of the brain’s reward system but also on interactions within the specific perceptual-reward network.
The research is detailed in a paper published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
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In particular, the team from the University of Barcelona, Spain explored why the brains of people with ‘specific musical anhedonia’ don’t experience pleasure or joy when listening to music.
“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 Josep Marco-Pallarés, a neuroscientist and author of the study.
They suggest learning about the brain’s reward-processing regions can help understand anhedonia better and could also help develop interventions for addiction and eating disorders too.
“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.”
Specific musical anhedonia is a condition where, despite having normal musical and hearing perception, people do not experience any pleasure or reward from music.
Marco-Pallarés’s team was behind the condition’s discovery 10 years ago. The new study shows brain scans of people with musical anhedonia have reduced activity in the brain’s reward circuit only when listening to music.
According to fMRI scans, the reward circuits in these individuals work at a normal level of activity when responding to other stimuli such as winning money.
“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.”
In order to identify individuals with musical anhedonia, the team developed a tool called the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire. This questionnaire measures how rewarding people find music in 5 different ways such as evoking emotion, helping regulate mood and fostering social connections.
Individuals with musical anhedonia will often score low on all 5 measurements.
The researchers are now collaborating with geneticists to identify the specific genes that might be connected to the condition. While it is still unclear why the musical anhedonia develops, a recent twin study shows genetic effects could be responsible for up to 54% of how much an individual enjoys music.
Future research will investigate whether the condition is something that changes throughout life or is an unchanging trait, and whether musical anhedonia and similar conditions can be reversed.
“A similar mechanism could underlie individual differences in responses to other rewarding stimuli,” says Marco-Pallarés. “Investigating these circuits could pave the way for new research on individual differences and reward-related disorders such as anhedonia, addiction, or eating disorders.”
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