Mas-Herrero Ernest, Karhulahti Mikko, Marco-Pallares Josep, Zatorre Robert J, Rodriguez-Fornells Antoni
Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada; International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Department of Basic Psychology, University of Barcelona, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Cognition and Brain Plasticity Group [Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute-] IDIBELL, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
Prog Brain Res. 2018;237:399-413. doi: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.03.017. Epub 2018 Apr 24.
A small percentage of healthy individuals do not find music pleasurable, a condition known as specific musical anhedonia. These individuals have no impairment in music perception which might account for their anhedonia; their sensitivity to primary and secondary rewards is also preserved, and they do not show generalized depression. However, it is still unclear whether this condition is entirely specific to music, or rather reflects a more general deficit in experiencing pleasure, either from aesthetic rewards in general, or in response to other types of emotional sounds. The aim of this study is to determine whether individuals with specific musical anhedonia also show blunted emotional responses from other aesthetic rewards or emotional acoustic stimuli different than music. In two tasks designed to assess sensitivity to visual art and emotional sounds, we tested 13 individuals previously identified as specific musical anhedonics, together with two more groups with average (musical hedonic, HDN) and high (musical hyperhedonics, HHDN) sensitivity to experience reward from music. Differences among groups in skin conductance response and behavioral measures in response to pleasantness were analyzed in both tasks. Notably, specific musical anhedonics showed similar hedonic reactions, both behaviorally and physiologically, as the HDN control group in both tasks. These findings suggest that music hedonic sensitivity might be distinct from other human abstract reward processing and from an individual's ability to experience emotion from emotional sounds. The present results highlight the possible existence of specific neural pathways involved in the capacity to experience reward in music-related activities.
一小部分健康个体并不觉得音乐带来愉悦感，这种情况被称为特异性音乐快感缺乏症。这些个体在音乐感知方面没有损伤，而音乐感知损伤本可能解释他们的快感缺乏；他们对主要和次要奖励的敏感度也得以保留，并且没有表现出广泛性抑郁。然而，目前仍不清楚这种情况是否完全局限于音乐，或者更确切地说，它反映的是在体验愉悦感方面存在更普遍的缺陷，这种缺陷要么源于一般的审美奖励，要么源于对其他类型情感声音的反应。本研究的目的是确定患有特异性音乐快感缺乏症的个体对其他审美奖励或与音乐不同的情感声学刺激是否也表现出情感反应迟钝。在两项旨在评估对视觉艺术和情感声音敏感度的任务中，我们测试了13名先前被确定为特异性音乐快感缺乏症患者，以及另外两组对从音乐中体验奖励具有平均（音乐享乐型，HDN）和高（音乐超享乐型，HHDN）敏感度的人群。在两项任务中，我们分析了各组在皮肤电导反应和对愉悦感的行为测量方面的差异。值得注意的是，在两项任务中，特异性音乐快感缺乏症患者在行为和生理上的享乐反应与HDN对照组相似。这些发现表明，音乐享乐敏感度可能与其他人类抽象奖励处理以及个体从情感声音中体验情感的能力不同。目前的结果凸显了在与音乐相关的活动中，参与体验奖励能力的特定神经通路可能存在。
