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Why A Song Can Get You High

According to a new study in Nature Neuroscience, there are songs that can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving by endogenous dopamine release in the striatum:

If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued. These results further speak to why music can be effectively used in rituals, marketing or film to manipulate hedonic states. Our findings provide neurochemical evidence that intense emotional responses to music involve ancient reward circuitry and serve as a starting point for more detailed investigations of the biological substrates that underlie abstract forms of pleasure.

According to study author Robert Zatorre, one of those songs is “Adagio For Strings” by DJ Tiesto:

(Hat Tip: In and Around the Lab)

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Medical News Of The Obvious: Music Impacts Behavior

Students exposed to songs with a positive message were more likely to help others after listening. A British study randomized students into groups who listened to socially conscious songs or those with negative or nonsense meanings. Then, a researcher pretended to knock pencils off the table by accident. Those who’d listened to positive songs helped more quickly and picked up almost five times as many pencils. Other subjects were asked to help with another research project, and three times as many volunteered.

Help! by the Beatles and Michael Jackson’s Heal the World were cited in the study, which is in press at the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Let us know your favorite “help” songs that get you through the day.

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

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