Research reveals the biochemical connection between music and emotion January 19

[Guest guest]

I love links that find the importance of music...a benign, easy therapy that is

affordable to all!

Research reveals the biochemical connection between music and emotion January 19

The universal structures of music can produce dopamine-induced anticipation and

release even if the music is unfamiliar. Credit: ISNS

You are in a concert hall, listening to music you love, Ludwig von Beethoven's

Ninth Symphony. You are happily awaiting the glorious climax in the fourth

movement -- you know it's coming -- when the full orchestra and chorus erupt

with the " Ode to Joy. " The moment is here and you are exhilarated, awash in a

sudden wave of pleasure.

When music sounds this good, there's a reason: dopamine.

In research published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at McGill

University in Montreal have established the direct link between the elation

stimulated by music and the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is the same

substance that puts the joy in sex, the thrill in certain illegal drugs, and the

warm feeling within a woman breast-feeding her child.

The substance also may explain why the power of music crosses human cultures,

the scientists said.

Valorie N. Salimpoor and other researchers in the lab of J. Zatorre took

eight subjects and asked them to bring in music they loved. They chose a broad

range of instrumental music, from Barber's Adagio for Strings (the most

popular) to jazz and punk. The test used only familiar music, Zatorre said,

because he wanted to make sure he was getting a " maximal response. "

What the subjects had in common was that the music they brought in gave them the

" chills, " which is actually a technical term for a kind of emotional response. A

positron emission tomography, or PET scan, measured dopamine release.

Dopamine is synthesized in the brain out of amino acids and transmits signals

from one neuron to another through the circuits of the brain.

The structure in the brain Zatorre's team looked at is the striatum, deep inside

the forebrain. The striatum has two subparts: the upper, or dorsal, and the

ventral below.

Zatorre said the dorsal part of the striatum is connected to the regions of the

brain involved in prediction and action, while the ventral is connected to the

limbic system, the most primitive and ancient part of the brain, where emotions

come from. " When you are anticipating, you are engaging the prediction part of

the brain; when you feel the chills, that's emotion, " Zatorre said, whose team

found that the dopamine triggered both parts.

According to the McGill research, during the anticipation phase dopamine pours

into the dorsal striatum when the climax occurs, triggering a reaction in the

ventral striatum that results in a release of pure emotion.

The idea that there was some biochemical reaction involved goes back to the work

of the late Leonard B. Meyer in the 1950s. Meyer was a musicologist not a

scientist, but he connected music theory with psychology and neuroscience,

emotional response to music patterns. He did not know the biochemical mechanism.

Great composers don't know it either but play on this process. German composer

Gustav Mahler is famous for creating tension that needs resolution, building

intensity until the orchestra explodes in a wave of sound. The listener knows

there is going to be an emotional resolution even if the piece is unfamiliar.

And, if the listener knows it is coming, the reaction can be even more intense.

It turns out, said Zatorre, that Mahler -- and conductors performing his music

-- play with the emotions of the audience by manipulating dopamine.

" What we're finding is that this is the brain mechanism that underlies this

phenomenon, " Zatorre said.

Zatorre hypothesizes that something similar happens when you hear music for the

first time, and preliminary results from recent testing show a similar result.

The universal structures of music can produce dopamine-induced anticipation and

release even if the music is unfamiliar.

According to Sharon Levy, who teaches music theory and piano literature at the

Juilliard School in New York and the Peabody Institute at s Hopkins

University in Baltimore, sometimes the emotional release comes from simply

relieving harmonic tension -- the use of relatively dissonant chords begging to

be resolved -- as Mahler does. On occasion the composer deliberately changes

expectation in happy, surprising ways, a device Meyer wrote that Mozart had

mastered. Either way, it's dopamine affecting the striatum.

Zatorre said he does not know what is happening in the brain of the composer who

is writing the music.

" My guess is that composing is such a complex act that you may not get that

emotional touch until later when you are actually experiencing it for the first

time, " Zatorre said.

The question is will knowing the role of dopamine change the way musicians

approach their art?

" Not much, " said Levy. " It just reminds me of something I knew all the time,

that music can change moods. "

Zatorre used orchestral music to avoid having emotions linked to words affect

the results. He is planning another study using vocal music, perhaps to see

whether Lady Gaga or Sinatra can turn on the dopamine.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-reveals-biochemical-music-emotion.html

=====