Are you one of the countless people who are still in the quest for the reason behind humans' love for music? Have you been asking yourself this, too: Why do I love music?
These are the same questions Canada-based McGill University researchers have been investigating for years. The findings of their study were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Now, they believe they have definitively proven what's taking place in the brain when humans are listening to a piece of music they love.
An INVERSE report said Ernesto Mas Herrero and Robert Zatorre, in their past study, established an association between a subject that listened to music he loved and activity in a part of the reward system of the brain, also known as the striatum.
Zatorre explained to the information site that it was interesting since activity in that particular area is typically linked to pleasure related to survival.
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Researchers said they believe they have definitively proven what’s taking place in the brain when humans listen to a piece of music they love.
The Striatum Response
Zatorre explained it'd been known for more than 65 years now that if one takes a rat, and if it is starving, and he gives it food and is an activity in the brain is gauged, the striatum response is quite strong to the highly satisfying substance that it needs to survive.
The pleasure that the mouse is feeling stems from what's described as the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, which the stratum releases when consuming the thing it needs for survival.
The striatum, Zatorre elaborated, is there too to react to the biological stimuli. It helps to identify if one is too cold or if one needs to get warm, or the other way around. The striatum, he continued, reacts to sexual stimulation and vitally all things that are "very biologically driven."
Nonetheless, music is not one of the things which have been traditionally considered essential for survival. The study authors' earlier research had presented an association between music and striatum, although the researchers wanted to find out if they could prove the relationship.
The TMS Approach
In the study, those who belonged to the controlled group comprising 17 volunteers, Mas Herrero and Zatorre, used an approach known as Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS to activate or inhibit the striatum while volunteer participants listened to pop music.
During TMS, a magnetic coil is positioned over a particular area of the brain. Then, a technician is sending bursts of electromagnetic pulses to that particular site of the brain, triggering activity.
Depending on the bursts' frequency, TMS can inhibit an activity in the targeted area of the brain. After listening to music while undergoing the TMS procedure, the volunteers were moved to an fMRI machine where the study authors could precisely observe what was going on in the striatum and auditory complex of the subjects. This is the brain area that processes the music.
Why We Love Music
The study findings verified the research team's hypothesis that the striatum and the auditory complex were talking to each other.
Zatory explained that the brain's auditory parts were more associated with the striatum when the stimulation was positive compared to when stimulation was negative.
This is essential, he added, since the occurrence tells when we really love the music we hear, our striatum communicates back and forth with the auditory cortex, the brain part that's certainly perceiving all the different patterns of sound, the chord relationships' rhythms, and the melodic expectancy patterns.
Earlier research proposed communication between different brain areas can have powerful impacts on humans' feelings and behaviors.
The researchers also said convincingly present that the pleasure humans do or do not derive from music is the outcome of their communication between their auditory complex and striatum and how inhibited or excited that striatum is as an outcome.
Related information about the brain's reaction to music is shown on The Verge's YouTube video below:
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