Hearing Good Music Is Like Snorting Good Cocaine
A team of scientists have published the results of a research project today which ties good music and feelings of euphoria together. For instance, did you know that listening to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" will get you so high?
The team of scientists from McGill University in Montreal, led by Valorie Salimpoor, published the results today in Nature Neuroscience. The study claims that hearing good music, or even eating good food, can trigger feelings of euphoria that your brain wants to feel again. Dopamine is released into your "brain circuits" to make you fiend like a crackhead for those sweet, sweet tunes you like. According to Salimpoor:
If music-induced emotional states can lead to dopamine release, as our findings indicate, it may begin to explain why musical experiences are so valued. These results further speak to why music can be effectively used in rituals, marketing or film to manipulate hedonistic states. Our findings provide neurochemical evidence that intense emotional responses to music involve ancient reward circuitry and serve as a starting point for more detailed investigations of the biological substrates that underlie abstract forms of pleasure."
Okay, that makes enough sense (sort of). However, don't know about you, but hearing "Adagio for Strings" (not a techno version) makes me think of the part in Platoon where Charlie Sheen heads off on a chopper, crying — not a night out with an eight ball of coke and nothing to lose. Just saying.
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