ANN/AFP/THE STAR – Why do some people get swept away by emotion when listening to a song, while others remain completely unmoved?
An international study, published in the journal Nature Communications, may shed some light on this puzzling question, suggesting that musical enjoyment is partly encoded in our genetic makeup.
Music has always accompanied humanity, but its profound power over our minds, our social ties and our culture is still largely mysterious.
In an attempt to unravel this mystery, a research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands conducted an original study using a classic method of behavioural psychology: twin analysis.
More than 9,000 Swedish twins – identical and fraternal – were interviewed to assess their sensitivity to musical enjoyment, their attraction to rewards in general, as well as their auditory abilities (perception of rhythm, melody or pitch).
The results are unexpected. Up to 54 per cent of the variations in the way participants experience musical pleasure may be linked to genetic differences.
Even more fascinating, this sensitivity appears to be partially independent of our taste for other types of pleasure, such as food or social rewards, but also of our musical skills.
In other terms, loving music to the point of being moved by it does not depend on our ear or our desire for pleasure or enjoyment overall. It could be a singular pleasure, grounded in our biology.
The researchers discovered multiple genetic pathways related to various components of the musical experience: the regulation of emotions, the pleasure of dancing to the beat or of playing music with others.
This highlights how intimate, complex and inherently human our relationship with music is.
For Giacomo Bignardi, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute and first author of the study, these discoveries open a new door to the understanding of pleasure.
“These findings suggest a complex picture in which partly distinct DNA differences contribute to different aspects of music enjoyment,” the researcher explains in a news release.
By deciphering the driving forces behind these gratifying experiences, the researchers aim to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms of reward, emotions and memory.
It is a way of redefining our vision of human musicality, no longer as a simple matter of culture or learning, but as an intrinsic reflection of our biological identity.
Could this be the key to one day solving one of the most fascinating mysteries of our species – one that Darwin considered particularly unfathomable?
