Friday, June 19, 2009

I want a new drug

According to new research, people respond to emotionally powerful music in the same way they do to addictive drugs.
Using a PET scan, the researchers showed that music that caused chills led to a release of dopamine in the reward centers of the brain (mesolimbic striatum) ... Music, a mere sequence of notes arranged in time, can activate the same reward centers in the brain as drugs such as cocaine.
How alarming. Conventional wisdom teaches us that listening to music is a wholesome activity as long as the music is innocent and upbeat and contains no adult language. But here we have the sinister truth. Any music, provided the listener finds it moving in some way, can trigger an addictive response.

Parents take heed: Hannah Montana is the gateway artist.

1 comment:

DeppityBob said...

I'm not sure how I missed this. (Actually, I am sure. I forget to scroll down on the left frame of my Mail app to where I keep blogs RSS'd.) The thought of Hannah Montana giving anyone chills gives me the ills. But that explains the response I have listening to "Star Wars" and "Superman" soundtracks, especially given the emotional attachment to the movies. But I have the same reaction to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Schubert's Ave Maria, some Philip Glass music, and the collected yodels of Slim Whitman.