In addition, there is no direct evidence showing that dopamine function is causally related to music-evoked pleasure. ( 11), most research on musical pleasure has relied on indirect measures of neuronal activation, with no specificity for neurotransmitter systems that may be involved, and thus their interpretation about the actual neurochemistry supporting musical pleasure has to be taken with caution.
However, except for the study of Salimpoor et al. Indeed, the pleasurable component of reward has been associated with hedonic hotspots in the NAcc regulated by opioids, rather than dopaminergic transmission ( 23). This view challenges previous evidence from primary rewards conducted in rodents, where dopaminergic manipulations show a clear role of dopamine in motivation and learning, but a controversial function in regulating hedonic responses in primary rewards such as food. These findings have led to a model whereby the recruitment of dopaminergic circuits by music-through communication with sensory and cognitive areas involved in the processing of musical information-would result into changes in emotional intensity and arousal, leading to pleasurable and rewarding feelings ( 20– 23). Notably, a PET study ( 11) found that, similar to the processing of biologically relevant rewards, preferred music induces dopamine release in striatal regions, particularly in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the caudate. Previous research has consistently shown that music-evoked pleasure is accompanied by physiological changes in the autonomous nervous system, as well as modulation of the mesolimbic reward pathway, which are similar to those found in response to primary (such as sex or food) and secondary rewards (e.g., money) (refs. This study shows a causal role of dopamine in musical pleasure and indicates that dopaminergic transmission might play different or additive roles than the ones postulated in affective processing so far, particularly in abstract cognitive activities. We demonstrate that levodopa and risperidone led to opposite effects in measures of musical pleasure and motivation: while the dopamine precursor levodopa, compared with placebo, increased the hedonic experience and music-related motivational responses, risperidone led to a reduction of both. We orally administrated to each participant a dopamine precursor (levodopa), a dopamine antagonist (risperidone), and a placebo (lactose) in three different sessions.
We addressed this problem through a double blind within-subject pharmacological design in which we directly manipulated dopaminergic synaptic availability while healthy participants ( n = 27) were engaged in music listening. However, there is a lack of direct evidence showing that dopamine function is causally related to the pleasure we experience from music. Previous neuroimaging findings point to a challenging role of the dopaminergic system in music-evoked pleasure.
Understanding how the brain translates a structured sequence of sounds, such as music, into a pleasant and rewarding experience is a fascinating question which may be crucial to better understand the processing of abstract rewards in humans.
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