Why does music bring us pleasure?

Neural DevelopmentRewardWellbeing & Therapy
Written By Lea Faes

Music = brain pleasure!

“This study shows for the first time a causal role of dopamine in musical pleasure and motivation: enjoying a piece of music, deriving pleasure from it, wanting to listen to it again, being willing to spend money for it, strongly depend on the dopamine released in our synapses,”

This type of research has many purposes beyond understanding how music affects our brain. Why is it we enjoy participating in cognitively challenging activities like singing and listening to music when it doesn’t seem to directly impact on our survival. Or does it? To survive do we need to feel cognitively alive and does music help create and sustain that cognitively life. Big, exciting questions.

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Lea Faes
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