Music Really Is Intoxicating, After All 174
jamie writes "Our reaction to the music that we love stimulates the flow of dopamine into certain sections of the brain, concludes a new study out of McGill University. The findings 'help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies,' the scientists note."
Re:'music is of such high value' (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does the DEA know about this? (Score:4, Informative)
I, for one, believe that the protection of our precious children from this terrible gateway drug requires firm action:
If you look at the early hysteria around rock'n'roll this is pretty much what some people wanted back then. They thought rock music would lead to young people losing respect for the old, an explosion of sexual freedom, and stuff like that.
Fortunately, they were right!
Even more clarification (Score:5, Informative)
To further and clarify some more on your point:
1. The comparison to chemicals is misleading. There are some chemicals which are simply the brain's normal signals for stuff like "I like this", "this is fun", or basically, "ok, this is worth concentrating on, please continue doing it."
Some drugs mimic the effect of such normal brain signals, by binding to the same receptors. E.g., THC binds to the same receptors as the canabinoids in the brain, so it creates the same euphoria, without it being actually a normal signal released by the brain. (Whereas nicotine merely inhibits the production of MAO-B, an enzime which neutralizes those canabinoids, so it makes you higher by prolonging the effect of the natural ones.)
So basically it's a signal as normal as, dunno, the interrupts in a computer. You can probably find a reason to say it's wrong to simulate interrupts that never happened as part of the normal operation (e.g., wiring a front switch to the NMI trace on the mobo), but railing against a situation where they happened as intended (as this or the "OMG, games produce dopamine" hysteria) is fucking stupid.
2. Dopamine is _not_ a reward signal, so it doesn't even produce such an euphoria.
Dopamine is a motivation signal. Remember when I said that some signals basically say, "ok, this is worth concentrating on, please continue doing it"? That's what dopamine does.
Just about anything that is interesting, captivating or fun by itself is producing dopamine. It's just the brain's way of signalling, "heeyy, I like this! please continue this or stay in the current situation, as apropriate."
Even though dopamine does fire up when an unexpected reward happens (as you'd expect), and is a part of the reward and reinforcement functions, it is not itself a reward signal. It doesn't even seem to play any role in perceiving pleasure.
3. A lot of bullshit around dopamine revolves around its use by the brain in such stuff as sex, or that some stimulants like cocaine also increase dopamine, or that very high levels are associated with manias and psychosis. You just need to drop a mention of one or more of those, and everyone is already ready to lap up "OMG, addiction" bullshit.
In reality that's not very surprising. That sex would also fire up a signal that says "don't stop" when that's a reproduction (hence, natural selection) advantage, is actually as expected as it gets. If the animal were likely to just stop in the middle of sex and go "you know, this is actually quite boring, I'll go pounce on something instead", you'd soon have an evolutionary dead end. (Cue "you've met my ex?" wisecracks;) That it would fire up in conjunction with artificial reward signals, when its normal function _is_ to signal "ok, keep doing whatever gave you the reward", is again rather mundane, and rather uninteresting for its use the rest of the time. And that an abnormal level of it would lead to abnormal effects, again, is actually kind of the normal state for any hormone in the body.
4. But at the end of the day, the fact still remains that it's a signal involved in desire/drive/motivation, and in acknowledging reward/pleasure. Whether you actually subscribe to the school of thought that it does or doesn't take part in actually experiencing that pleasure, the fact remains something has to already be pleasant or interesting to cause a dopamine shot.
That some music you like or a video game or watching Star Trek or really whatever enjoyable activity produces a dopamine shot, just says that you do like it.
Just about the only kind of life that would be free from such "intoxication" would be to never experience anything pleasant or any kind of drive/desire. Also, you'd probably have Parkinson. It's not the kind of existence almost anyone actually has, nor the kind of existence anyone would want.
Well, except if it's those evil music/comics/games addicts. Then their having an existence which includes any fun is obviously eeeevil.