So I’m fairly certain that everyone listens to and likes some sort of music. Everyone also listens to music at different times, whether it is working out, doing homework, or just lounging about. As I was listening to some of my own it got me thinking as to why do we listen to music? And what exactly does it do for us? Why do I have this want to listen to songs that don’t especially appeal to me when they are stuck in my head?
Looking in to it a bit more I found a study that can be found here & here that describes why we like some music more than others. To quickly summarize the study, scientists at McGill University had participants listen to music in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) machine and rate how much money they would spend on that song to buy it. Through the FMRI the scientists noticed that the more money someone would spend on a song the more activity there was in the nucleus accumbens. A number of other factors such as what music you listened to while growing up can influence how your nucleus accumbens reacts now. So it’s really just all in your head. (Literally).
A personal question I had was what happens if your Nucleus Accumbens is damaged? How would that affect your music listening experience? See now the nucleus accumbens is also the part of the brain that releases dopamine or the “pleasure chemical” often released during sex or when eating food. Damage to this part of the brain would make most things a lot less enjoyable. My thought would be that you just would not enjoy music the same way that you do. Protect your nucleus accumbens and rock on!