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A: Nearly everyone enjoys listening to music (since you are sitting here reading this note, you probably enjoy music as much as, if not more than, most people!). We say “nearly everyone,” because there is a small subset of the population (between 1-5% of people) who have what scientists call musical anhedonia. Musical anhedonia is a selective lack of pleasure from music. It is “selective” because individuals with musical anhedonia still derive pleasure from other activities, such as eating a good meal or enjoying a conversation with friends, but they just don’t enjoy music.

By studying individuals with musical anhedonia, we have learned about what makes music so rewarding to the rest of us! Neuropsychological and neuroimaging research on people with musical anhedonia has helped identify the brain structures involved in musical reward: Musical anhedonia seems to stem from disconnections between the reward regions of the brain (i.e., the “pleasure centers”) and brain structures involved in actually perceiving sounds. That is, we find music rewarding because it activates both structures for hearing sounds AND structures for feeling pleasure! When these connections are disrupted, people no longer derive pleasure from music.

But what is it about music that activates these auditory and reward structures in such a way that makes us feel emotions when we listen to it? One prominent theory is that music evokes emotions because it takes advantage of the reward associated with setting expectations and fulfilling those expectations. We have all been exposed to music throughout our lifetimes. This exposure has taught us, even implicitly, the typical patterns that music takes. Certain chords are more likely to follow from other chords, for example. We therefore have learned certain expectations for music. Even musically untrained listeners can tell when something sounds “off” or surprising in a musical piece. Our brains find it rewarding to predict what comes next, and to be right about those predictions! But, we can’t be right all the time – music is enjoyable when there is a balance between being predictable yet surprising. Too predictable, and it’s boring; too surprising, and we can’t make sense of it! Therefore, these predictive processes are one way in which music is suggested to evoke pleasure in listeners.

–Dr. Amy Belfi, Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology

A: Most of us have probably had the experience of hearing music that suddenly triggers a memory. For example, a snippet of your favorite song from high school could prompt a vivid image of driving around your hometown on a hot summer night with your friends, singing along to the radio with the windows open. This seems almost effortless at times—it may be a song you haven’t heard or a memory you haven’t thought about in years, but it all comes flooding back with just a few notes.

Research on the connections between music and memories—these types of memories are what researchers refer to as “autobiographical memories”—is in fairly early stages. We’ve realized music-evoked memories are more detailed, vivid, and emotional than memories evoked by images, words, TV shows, or food. Music has also been shown to be effective at triggering memories in people with dementia, including individuals with Alzheimer’s disease.

While we are still trying to figure out the how and why, one idea is that music can be a highly emotional cue and emotions can facilitate memory retrieval. Music is also usually present at emotional moments in our lives, which are in turn likely to be stored in our memory. There is still much work left to be done, but I guess we’ll put on a good record and get started.

–Dr. Amy Belfi, Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology