When I ask a lecture theatre full of students how they would feel if they could never listen to a piece of music again, most are horrified. Many have been plugged into their headphones until the moment the class begins. But without fail, one or two will shyly admit that their lives would not change at all if music didn’t exist.
Psychologists call this “music anhedonia”, meaning an absence of pleasure for music. And a new paper from neuroscientists in Spain and Canada suggests it is caused by a problem with communication between different parts of the brain.
