Why is music so addictive? We have our ancestors to blame…
By David Fisher on 05/02/2013
Trying to get a foot in the door of the music industry is a notoriously bad career move. It is a path that resigns the majority to a few years of overdrafts and unsympathetic landlords. The disillusioned will then finally accept the prescience of their parents’ post-college counsel and get a proper job. The stubbornly passionate will become music teachers and propagate the next generation of dreamers. So why, when this series of unfortunate events is one of the worst kept secrets in the music business, is the urge to make it big in music so desperate in so many? Admit it, we’ve all had musical ambitions that surpass impressing the rubber duck in the bath. Even for those who profess no desire to take the stage (or the recording studio) listening to music can be an obsession: Psy’s Gangnam Style has surely transcended terms like “craze” or “fad” to become a musical addiction of global proportions.
And addiction would appear to be exactly the right word to use. When we hear a song that we like, our bodies react by producing the neurotransmitter dopamine which engenders feelings of enjoyment. This chemical is also released when we drink a glass of water because we’re thirsty, or after we’ve had sex. In these situations, the body is rewarding actions that increase its chances of survival and reproduction so that our conscious selves will be more likely to repeat the action. So we are addicted to music, at least in the same sense that we are addicted to food, water and sex. But how then does listening to music increase the chances of our genes being passed on to the next generation?
If we were to examine modern society the answer would be that it doesn’t (unless you count the possibility that rock stars of the more promiscuous variety have had ample opportunity to “do a Genghis Khan”). The enjoyment we derive from music is now fixed not just in our genome but in our culture and natural selection have little influence. Instead, the earliest forms of music-making hold the key. An easy answer, as it were, is that musicality is a side-effect of being large brained and part of a learning culture. However this does not explain why it is chemically reinforced with dopamine.
Another theory refers to its roots in tribal settings, where music was often performed in groups and would help strengthen social bonds. Quality of life and technology would benefit from the harmony and groups devoting more time to musical activities might conceivably be in better condition or “fitter” than those groups that don’t. Problems arise, however, with this theory being evolutionary viable. For example, competition between hostile groups would more often than not have been a somewhat violent affair. Surely the early-hominids who spent less time banging sticks together and more time banging heads would win these skirmishes and so the Sinatras of the Stone Age would swiftly die out.
A more convincing argument defines music as an analogue of bird and whale song i.e. a method of communication; a signal. To be favoured by natural selection, a signal must manipulate the behaviour of its receiver in such a way that the benefit to the sender is greater than the cost of producing the signal in the first place. Some of the most elaborate signals in nature have evolved to display the quality of the individual and attract a mate. For example, the fantastical plumage and mating displays of male birds of paradise are only worthwhile if the female is persuaded to mate, the display does not attract predators or competing males, and the male does not just expire from exhaustion before he gets a chance to mate. So what message might early music have conveyed that was so beneficial to the “artist” to justify the time and energy spent perfecting their performance?
As brains became larger and more complex in primates and early-humans, thus it became more important to the survival and fitness of an individual. Growth and maintenance of the brain involves about half of all the genes in our genome, two-third of which are probably expressed no where else. Consequently, somehow conveying the quality of the brain to potential mates would be very informative and very rewarding to our large-noggined ancestors.
As a signal with the potential for immense complexity, music with both rhythm and melody requires fine motor control and a capacity for automating complex learned behaviours. A competent display not only betrays a well developed brain, but also indicates high quality in other traits too: a suitor with time enough to perfect his performance and feed himself is fit enough to provide for a family. Furthermore, as a signal of quality, music is hard to fake. This is fundamental if the signal is to stay the course of evolutionary time; on the whole, prospective mates will only attend to a signal that they can be sure is honest in its message.
And so follows sexual selection: competition between males for mates leads to more complex musical signals, whilst females evolve a preference for them. Perhaps then the dopamine response originally evolved to encourage mating and help them identify good quality signals over just average ones.
Over our evolutionary history music has become ingrained in culture rather than genetics. Grade 8 on the clarinet probably gives little indication of brain size and is, unfortunately, not much of a chat-up line. Yet French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss said that “the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods” and he is not wrong: the greatest musical icons are often the most admired and adored in society. How do we explain this? Well my cynical streak suspects that things have come full circle and now sex sells music, rather than the other way around…
PHOTO/david Drexler
Is music addictive?
Like / 4Research entitled "The Rewarding Aspects of Music Listening Are Related to Degree of Emotional Arousal" published on October 16, 2009 by Valorie N. Salimpoor1,2,3,4*, Mitchel Benovoy3,5, Gregory Longo2, Jeremy R. Cooperstock3,5, Robert J. Zatorre1,2,3,4 (1. Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2. Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 3. Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Music Media and Technology, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 4. International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 5. Centre for Intelligent Machines, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) has connected the "feeling" people experience listening to music with the dopamine response system in the brain.
The researchers found that the physiological and psychological response to music was very similar to that in cocaine addiction and may be mediated by the same parts of the brain and the same chemistries.
From the time that the first caveman beat a hollow log with two sticks and observed the response of his tribal group, musicians have intuitively known the power that music has to manipulate other people. Beethoven and Lady Ga Ga are equally emotional manipulators. This statement does not imply a direct understanding of the psychology or chemistry on the part of the "artist." The multiple rearrangement of music prior to performance for small audiences in the past and today is the perfecting ground that produces the needed emotional response that guides the listener to buy that music.
The study measured both physiological and psychological responses.
"Emotional arousal was assessed through psychophysiological measurements of galvanic skin response (GSR), temperature, heart rate, blood volume pulse (BVP) amplitude, and respiration rate. Pleasure states were continuously obtained through subjective ratings of neutral, low pleasure, and high pleasure using a button box. Chills were also indicated through button presses."
Some of the more interesting findings from the research are:
These results have broader implications by demonstrating that strongly felt emotions could be
rewarding in themselves in the absence of a physically tangible reward or a specific functional goal,
The conundrum lies in the fact that there are no direct functional similarities between music and other pleasure-producing stimuli: it has no clearly established biological value (cf., food, love, and sex), no tangible basis (cf., pharmacological drugs and monetary rewards), and no known addictive properties (cf gambling and nicotine). Despite this, music is consistently ranked amongst the top ten things that individuals find highly pleasurable .... ,
There were no restrictions to the genre of music that could be provided. This was done to increase the ecological validity of our findings and to ensure that any observed effects were not due to a specific genre of music,
Our data revealed a strong positive association between subjective ratings of pleasure and autonomic nervous system arousal,
Data showed significant positive correlations between subjectively reported pleasure states and
objectively measured increases in autonomic nervous system activity for all physiological measures.
The research indicates no "addictive" quality in music, however the perpetual push by studios for new material and the "need" for musicians and writers to create new music may indicate a type of addiction unknown to date. This "addiction" may also be indicated by the response of the purchasing public to the next "new release" of emotion and/or music. There have been several "addiction treatment" facilities that promised distraught parents to relieve their teenager's "addiction to MTV."
Whatever the true nature of the beast, people are emotionally affected by music.
The music industry, advertising, and politics have made use of your emotional response to music and manipulated your buying and voting by using music for eons. Music is used so adroitly to manipulate the consumer that the public does not even have a notion of being used like a tool.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007487
The free access research report has a literal infinity of references that supports their conclusions.