The Science of Not Feeling Music: Exploring Specific Anhedonia
For most, music is a deeply rewarding experience, evoking emotion, fostering connection, and simply bringing joy. But for a small percentage of the population, music simply doesn’t do anything. This condition,termed “musical anhedonia,” isn’t a lack of hearing or musical understanding,but a genuine inability to experience pleasure from music. New research from the University of Barcelona is shedding light on the neurological basis of this fascinating phenomenon, and opening doors to understanding how we experience reward in general.
Researchers, led by neuroscientist Josep Marco-Pallarés, have identified a key difference in the brains of individuals with musical anhedonia: a disconnection between the brain’s reward circuitry and the auditory network. To identify those affected, the team developed the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ), wich assesses how rewarding music is across five key areas – emotional response, mood regulation, social connection, movement/dance, and novelty seeking. Individuals scoring low across all five areas are likely experiencing musical anhedonia.Brain imaging studies, using fMRI scans, confirm this disconnect.while people with musical anhedonia can process music normally – thier auditory circuits are functioning – their reward circuitry shows reduced activity when listening to music. Crucially, this same reward circuitry responds normally to other rewards, like winning money, indicating the system itself isn’t broken, just disconnected from the auditory experience.
“This lack of pleasure for music is explained by disconnectivity between the reward circuit and the auditory network – not by the functioning of their reward circuit, per se,” explains Marco-Pallarés.
This research challenges the customary view of reward as an “all-or-nothing” phenomenon. Ernest Mas-Herrero,another neuroscientist involved in the study,emphasizes the importance of how the reward circuitry interacts with other brain regions. “If the reward circuit is not working well, you get less pleasure from all kinds of rewards,” he says. “Here, what we point out is that it might be not only the engagement of this circuitry that is important but also how it interacts with other brain regions that are relevant for the processing of each reward type.”
The causes of musical anhedonia are still being investigated,but initial studies suggest both genetic and environmental factors play a role. Twin studies indicate that genetics may account for up to 54% of an individual’s enjoyment of music.
This research has broader implications. The team believes their methodology could be applied to identify other “specific anhedonias” – a lack of pleasure related to specific stimuli, like food. They hypothesize that a similar disconnect between brain regions involved in food processing and the reward circuitry could explain why some individuals don’t experience pleasure from eating.
Currently, the team is collaborating with geneticists to pinpoint specific genes linked to musical anhedonia and investigating whether the condition is stable over a lifetime or potentially reversible. Understanding these individual differences in reward processing could ultimately lead to new insights into, and treatments for, reward-related disorders like addiction, eating disorders, and general anhedonia.
Source: Mas-Herrero, E., et al. (2025). Understanding individual differences to specific rewards through music. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.06.015
