The power of music to impact our moods is something that music fans have felt for a long time. Many have stopped and asked themselves how it is possible that a piece of music could have such a hold on their days or weeks after they first hear it. Indeed, this is something that has even caused some researchers to look for answers about the connection between emotions and music. You can see more about that research in this article, but we will also cover the topic for you here today.
Dopamine Receptors
The “feel-good” chemical in the brain, dopamine, is something that all people naturally create to some extent or another. Those who are regularly processing dopamine are typically well-adjusted to life and feel good about the course of their life as a whole. On the flip side, those who aren’t producing enough dopamine may feel depressed or sad about the state of affairs in their life. This is why many anti-depressant drugs focus primarily on the dopamine receptors in the brain.
That said, there are things in this world that can naturally work on the dopamine receptors in our brains as well. For example, researchers now say that music can impact the dopamine receptors of our brain in such a way that we are able to feel a change in our mood just by listening to music that makes us feel a certain way.
Researchers decided to test how the brain reacts to certain pieces of music. They wanted to discover once and for all what it was about music that impacted our moods in certain ways. These researchers discovered that a functional variation in dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) gene modulates was what was at play when it came to the emotional changes that people experience when listening to a piece of music. It was a revolutionary finding that had not been previously understood.
What This Could Mean For Science
There are many potentially exciting findings that could come from the discovery of how the brain responds to certain types of music. Scientists are still hard at work figuring out what all of this new research could mean for how we treat ailments such as depression, but there are reasons to believe that it may be possible to use music as part of a broad approach to working on issues like that.
Elvira Brattico, Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, stated that the use of music to stimulate the dopamine receptors in the brain is something that can be extremely helpful to many patients and that those patients show a marked improvement of the flow of dopamine throughout their body as a result of listening to certain types of music. It is a starting point that science can build on. No one is suggesting that music is a substitute for anti-depressants, but there are many who believe that it can be a nice complementary intervention for those who are struggling with difficult emotions.
How the Study Functioned
To get the most accurate information and results, the study involved 38 health participants who agreed to be part of this study. Twenty-six of the participants had a “GG variant” of DRD2 and 12 a “GT variant”. The scientists conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging while having the participants work on a task that required some emotional labor to complete. They were subjected to music or noise of some kind while performing that task.
The DRD2GG participants showed a marked improvement in mood after listening to music while performing their tasks. The GT variant participants had a decline in their mood after listening to noise while doing their task. Additionally, the music seemed to lift the moods of all participants more so than random noises being pumped into their ears.
The findings show that the functionality of one’s dopamine receptors plays a big role in the way that one responds to music and how it impacts their mood. Those with high-functioning dopamine receptors seem to have the biggest positive impacts when listening to music.
Personalized Music Selections
One of the recommendations to come out of this study is that people should look for personalized music that makes them feel a particular emotion. The songs that one chooses for their emotional boost may differ from the songs that another individual selects. That is just how this thing works, and it goes to show that there are a variety of experiences that music can bring about.
People who are interested in getting started with this will be thrilled to learn that there are lists created by other individuals that promote certain songs and pieces of music as providing a certain emotional feeling. These are songs and pieces of music that tend to work for most people. It is a great place to start, but you need to figure out for yourself what musical triggers you have and how you can use those to develop the emotional response that you want to have when you put your headphones in and start listening.
Researchers are very clear about the fact that different people will have different experiences when they listen to music. They offer no broad or sweeping generalizations about people who are listening to different kinds of music. Instead, they only seek to let people know that music can potentially have an impact on one’s emotions and change the way that they feel about some of the life circumstances that they may be in at this time.
There is still a lot to be studied in this field, but some of the early results that have come from these studies are encouraging to many people. They would like to see even more studies about the impact of music on mood, but most people agree that they already knew that there was some kind of connection between music and mood, and this research only goes to prove their assumptions correct. When you think about it like that, it makes perfect sense that so many people turn to music to help process challenging emotions.
Image by Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE ?? from Pixabay
