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We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

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Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#101

Post by bane »

lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson

2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#102

Post by Retric »

tsumnia wrote: post #80
dan-robertson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. For an example I would say that roadworks or traffic or other people’s conversations do not really elicit an emotional response however many people would likely prefer quiet. I think it is unreasonable to assume that if someone were to say “well I prefer quiet, I guess,” they mean that they have some great emotional response to being in the quiet making them love it. It would be more reasonable to assume…

> It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise. We are actually agreeing; however I'm saying that this is a preference. Wikipedia refers to anhedonia as an inability to have pleasure about something. However, valence [1] as a measurement identifies affect dimensions as a polar system - (to quote Wikipedia) "Stress is negative valence and opp…

I disagree. I don’t enjoy or listen to music, but it’s still sound. And I like many people I dislike loud sounds, a subset of which is loud music.

I may not fall into this group. But, I suspect these people still have emotional responses to sounds loud enough to be causing dammage.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#103

Post by JoshMnem »

We're the way we are because our ancestors had these traits and they were the ones who survived. Music is a system for encoding knowledge, especially across generations.[1] Humans appear to sexually select for musical ability.[2][3] We like music, because being able to encode encyclopedic knowledge across generations without written language is a successful adaptation for survival.

[1] https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/pop...

[2] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305735613482025

[3] Ask a musician.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#104

Post by gwern »

rimunroe wrote: post #6
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing! I'd always thought it was just some weird thing about me. I don't really get a whole lot of pleasure out of music, or get moved by music much. I almost never listen to music. When I do listen, it's usually to drown out external noise or help me focus, but in that case I usually just listen to the same song on a loop.

Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :)

There's actually quite a lot of this: it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.

I sometimes wonder what people with pain asymbolia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_asymbolia) or aboulia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboulia) make of the rest of us talking abut pain and wanting things.

Some links: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792

Also, while I'm at it: when your nose is stuffy but which nostril it is seems to cycle over the course of the day, you're not imagining it and that's called the 'nasal dilation cycle' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle ; those things you see crossing your vision are also real and part of your eye fluid, called 'floaters' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater ; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination is probably self-explanatory.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#105

Post by noisem4ker »

crazynick4 wrote: post #44
mesarvagya wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory of dopamine is that there has to be strong local connections on brain for the activity the person is being kept under. Think of a song that you initially disliked but when you hear the same thing again and again, the neural connections gets stronger. When this happens, brain will release dopamine enabling brain get its reward.

I think there is more to it then that. By that argument alone, I should enjoy a song more, the more I listen to it. Then why do we get tired of old music and look for new music?

You probably start to tolerate a song you don't like better the longer you are exposed to it. Of course, at some point boredom kicks in. You find pleasure both in what sounds familiar (thus harmless, cozy) and in what sounds novel (a new experience, an opportunity for gaining knowledge).

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#106

Post by firdak »

drblast wrote: post #52
qznc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356

This is fascinating! Can any of you with musical anhedonia watch either of these songs and explain how you feel? https://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk

The first one is interesting - if I heard it on the radio I wouldn't think twice about it, but seeing a video is different. Watching the guy play the guitar gives me a sense of how difficult it must be to play - which means I appreciate the music because I appreciate the technical skill of the person playing it.

The second one does nothing for me - it's just dull.

Can you explain how you feel when you listen to those songs?

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#107

Post by sizzle »

bane wrote: post #101
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson 2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

How does this compare to an orgasm?

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#108

Post by firdak »

lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

> As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to music...

I, in turn, find this somewhat astonishing. Not only is it so different from my own experience, it's difficult to understand.

When you're enjoying a piece of music, you can at least imagine what it would be like not to feel anything. For me, though, when I see people enjoying music, it's so confusing. What am I "supposed" to be feeling?

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#109

Post by lgats »

firdak wrote: post #108
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

> As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to music... I, in turn, find this somewhat astonishing. Not only is it so different from my own experience, it's difficult to understand. When you're enjoying a piece of music, you can at least imagine what it would be like not to feel anything. For me, though, when I see people enjoying music, it's so confusing. What am I "supposed" to be fee…

the beat!

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#110

Post by sizzle »

munificent wrote: post #46
lqet wrote: post #2

Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…

I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener. He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?" I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamen…

I enjoy music but I realizes that the ROI of listening to music is on uplifting my mood. I rather listen to a podcast or NPR now cause I get something to ponder on or form an opinion about on my commute. I rather listen to music socially with people in the car though.

From the field of neuroscience, we know that music affects the brain like a drug of sorts. I believe Steven Pinker said in a book of his that music releases a "cocktail of neurotransmitters."

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