Think of your favorite piece of music to get a sense of why some individuals love music and others don't. When the music swells or the chorus begins, do you get shivers? Or are the first few bars enough to send shivers down your spine?

Although having no clear survival utility, listening to music can be a tremendously pleasurable activity. It's one of the most enjoyable pastimes that individuals participate in.

However, in a study published today in Current Biology, Spanish and Canadian researchers describe a category of people known as "music anhedonic," or people who don't like music.

This is a fascinating phenomenon that we believe is quite rare. Importantly, these people are not "amusic," a condition caused by impairment to regions of the brain essential to sense or interpret music, which can be acquired or hereditary. The "music anhedonic" in this study has the same perception of music as the rest.

They aren't folks who don't appreciate pleasure in general – they aren't unhappy or constrained, and they are just as sensitive to non-musical pleasures as the rest of us (such as food, money, sex, exercise, and drugs).

They simply don't get the same shivers or have similar reactions to pleasant music as other folks. They simply aren't musically inclined. I'm getting chills, and they're getting worse. The "pleasure chemical" dopamine is released in the striatum, a major element of the brain's reward system when we listen to pleasant music.

Importantly, music activates the striatum, like other pleasurable stimuli like food and sex. Dopamine is released in the dorsal (or higher) striatum in anticipation of the song's apex – or "hotspot," as music psychologist John Sloboda describes it.

Dopamine is released in the neighboring ventral striatum during the peak when we experience chills and other signs that our body's autonomic nerve system – responsible for regulating involuntary body processes – is being awakened.

So, what's going on in music anhedonics' heads?

The authors provide a neurological explanation for their findings. While many different forms of enjoyable stimuli activate the same reward circuit in the brain, there are some variances depending on the stimulus. It's likely that the pattern of brain regions engaged especially by music pleasure, such as the connection from auditory regions that hear music to reward centers, is slightly different in these persons than in others.

This isn't odd because we know how enjoyable (and potentially addictive) other rewards like food, sex, money, and drugs can be to various people. Still, it's unusual to receive no pleasure in response to these rewards. Is the plot now more complicated?

Symphony with bittersweet overtones

Music is a complicated phenomenon that has various effects on us and is employed for a variety of objectives. While enjoyment is a common motive for listening to music, we are often driven to it for other reasons. The music can be quite unpleasant at times. Of course, the term "pleasant" is subjective.

Our attraction to, and often dependence on, sad, angry, or even frightening music defies evolutionary theory - why seek out something that is emotionally negative?

On the other hand, music psychology is a fast-growing discipline that draws on studies from a variety of fields, including cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, and affective computing (the science of human-computer interaction in which the device can sense and respond to the user's emotions). Swedish music psychologist Alf Gabrielsson found that only around half of the powerful musical experiences contain positive feelings in a study involving over 1,000 persons.

Many of the songs contained "mixed emotions" (imagine nostalgic or bittersweet love songs), and roughly one out of every 10 included negative emotions.

'Non-positive' can be beneficial.

For a variety of reasons, we listen to music that makes us feel this way. We can use it to express how we're feeling - sometimes this will exacerbate the situation (for example, when we use music to ruminate), but other times it will help us express an emotion we couldn't express otherwise.

As a result, we may feel more emotionally aware or stable as a result of the experience.

We also use music to solve issues, see things from a different perspective, energize or calm ourselves, and avoid or divert ourselves – all well-known tactics for managing or regulating emotions. Music can also assist us in making connections with others. Even though we don't ordinarily get a buzz from music, the increased social interaction that occurs when we listen with others can be extremely rewarding.

Individuals who listened to music with close friends or partners had considerably higher autonomic responses than those who listened alone, according to a 2012 study.

We may be able to better understand others' emotional or mental states, and music can sometimes feel like a "virtual buddy," bringing refuge and comfort when required and possibly even increasing the release of oxytocin, a stress-relieving and bonding hormone.

All of these uses of music have the potential to improve our "eudaimonic well-being," or our sense of purpose and participation in life.

Other than the reward circuit, they also involve a distributed network of connected brain regions. This means that even if the conventional pleasure response is absent, music's good benefits may be sustained.

Another quality of music that sets it apart from many other pleasurable stimuli is that it is an art form. And, as an art form, it can be appreciated artistically, rather than emotionally, through intellectual or analytical means.

We can listen to a piece dripping with misery, such as Albinoni's Adagio in G minor or Trent Reznor's Hurt (listen below), and find awe and beauty in the composer's intricate music and flawless performance. We could explain why some of the music anhedonic in this study reported feeling some pleasure from music despite the fact that their bodies were not there.

Aesthetically pleasing stimuli stimulate reward circuitry but activate other frontal brain regions involved in the aesthetic assessment. Even if their reward brain circuitry differs slightly from those of us who can have significant physical responses to music, music anhedonic may be able to appreciate and enjoy music.

However, music anhedonic may still find music to be a beneficial tool for expressing and regulating their emotions and connecting with others. Or are music "aneudaimonics" also anhedonic? Indeed, we know so little about this interesting, previously "hidden" phenomenon that this study paves the way for a slew of additional research - which is satisfying in and of itself. You must have found this article informative. Visit our free music app to download music free online.