We have a multiple choice quiz for you. We’re capable of many awesome things here at NCS, but reading your minds isn’t one of them (yet), so don’t worry — you won’t be graded. Here’s the question: What do eating, fucking, and listening to good metal have in common? Please select from the following answers:
(a) None of them is as much fun when your parents are in the room.
(b) All three are performed with your mouth open like a big-mouth bass (the fish, not the instrument)
(c) All three cause the release of dopamine in the brain
(d) I wouldn’t know because (so far) the only thing I’ve had sex with is my hand
(e) Stay out of my life, you fucking NCS perverts
Did you make your pick?
Okay, this was sort of a trick question, because the only definitely wrong answer is (e). Three of the other answers — (a), (b), and (d) — could be winners, but that all depends on you. The only definitely right answer, according to a recent scientific study from Canada, is (c). After the jump, we’ll look at a story about that study — and of course we’ll add our typically tasteless commentary.
The original story is here.
Music rewards brain like sex or drugs
Finding explains why music popular across cultures: McGill researchers
The Associated Press
Monday, January 10, 2011Whether it’s the Beatles or Beethoven, people like music for the same reason they like eating or having sex: It makes the brain release a chemical that gives pleasure, a study says.
The brain substance is involved both in anticipating a particularly thrilling musical moment and in feeling the rush from it, researchers found.
Well, that explains why I get so tumescent thinking about the albums that are due in 2011 from bands like Pig Destroyer, Decapitated, Insomnium, and Fleshgod Apocalypse. Just the anticipation releases fun brain chemicals!
Previous work had already suggested a role for dopamine, a substance brain cells release to communicate with each other. But the new work, which scanned people’s brains as they listened to music, shows it happening directly.
While dopamine normally helps us feel the pleasure of eating or having sex, it also helps produce euphoria from illegal drugs. It’s active in particular circuits of the brain.
Yeah, so what they’re saying is that good metal bands are like pushers or pimps or chefs — or all three — except they make a living by selling t-shirts.
The tie to dopamine helps explain why music is so widely popular across cultures, Robert Zatorre and Valorie Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal write in an article posted online Sunday by the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The study used only instrumental music, showing that voices aren’t necessary to produce the dopamine response, Salimpoor said. It will take further work to study how voices might contribute to the pleasure effect, she said.
This will make the likes of Tre Watson, Dan Dankmeyer, and Ben “Cloudkicker” Sharp so happy! They don’t need no fucking vocalists to get your dopamine flowing. But we knew that already.
The researchers described brain-scanning experiments with eight volunteers who were chosen because they reliably felt chills from particular moments in some favourite pieces of music. That characteristic let the experimenters study how the brain handles both anticipation and arrival of a musical rush.
Dopamine surged in one part of the striatum during the 15 seconds leading up to a thrilling moment, and a different part when that musical highlight finally arrived.
They reliably got “chills”? What kind of fucking music were these test subjects getting off on? When I think about metal songs that get me off, “giving me chills” isn’t the description that comes to mind. More like “blowing the top of my fucking head off.”
The study volunteers chose a wide range of music — from classical and jazz to punk, tango and even bagpipes. The most popular were Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Debussy’s Clair de Lune.
I guess that explains the chills thing — Barber and Beethoven, jazz and tango. I guess maybe punk and bagpipes could give you the chills, but that music makes me wanna drink heavily and break shit.
I do wonder how they correlated the test subjects’ dopamine response from music with their dopamine response to eating and fucking. To make this a valid experiment, wouldn’t you have to identify the fucking-and-eating dopamine response using the same subjects?
I can imagine the ads that the researchers used: “Wanted: subjects for controlled scientific study of brain chemical responses to stimuli. Must be willing to eat, fuck, and listen to good music, repeatedly. Compensation will be paid.” I’m really surprised they only got 8 volunteers. [insert joke about Canadians]
Clearly, this study must be repeated with metalhead subjects listening to their favorite metal. Or maybe they should just use metalheads and metal for Part 2 of the study — the one that will test how voices contribute to “the pleasure effect.” They could match up people like Johan Hegg and Mikael Åkerfeldt against a bag of cheeseburgers and a kitchen-table fuck and see what comes out on top. Where do we sign up?
13 Responses to “WHAT DO EATING, FUCKING, AND LISTENING TO METAL HAVE IN COMMON?”
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Maybe they need to run a control test against the Bass Drop Deluxe Burger. Or any other food coma inducing meals, including turkey and anything else with considerable amounts of triptophan.
I’m sure adding vocals to the mix would provide some interesting results, based on the listeners’ tastes. Pig squeals, growls, shrieks, howls and Yoko Ono-esque gibberish would probably induce different responses in the brain.
I don’t know how a scientist could determine why some people get off on death grunts and other people get a dopamine rush from Simone SImons — but that’s an interesting question. Would also be interesting to know whether what you like in vocal style correlates with anything else about your body’s response to stimuli.
I can tell you from personal experience that The Bass Drop Deluxe Burger causes you to shoot a big dopamine load . . . so to speak. I’ve read that activities like eating spicy food and having sex (and exercising) also trigger the release of endorphins, which, like dopamine, are also neurotransmitters and make you feel great. So you get a double whammy of endorphins and dopamine from sex and from eating at least certain kinds of food, but music seems to trigger only dopamine. Or maybe they just haven’t done an endorphin test on music yet. Maybe bad music triggers endorphins, since they act to counteract pain. Or maybe I should stop nerding out over all this body-chemical science.
Well, if you combine physical activity and music, you could get some more detailed results, but it comes down to how many factors you’re willing to look at – or what you need to rule out. While this study has looked at sex, exercise comes to mind – a lot of people work out to music, sometimes with a mix of songs selected for that purpose. Whether it’s in a gym, at home or something a bit more mundane like a run/jog with an iPod going, there is a tendency to use certain songs as a soundtrack to being active.
Another thing to possibly look at is the response in peoples body chemistry when listening to music they don’t like (or more, cannot stand) or food they don’t care for. So many variables to work with and I doubt it’s going to be easy to come up with definitive results. For all the advances in science and medicine, a full understanding of the brain is far away yet.
Man, so many interesting questions. I used to think listening to music while exercising was useful as a motivator or a distraction (if you’re doing some kind of exercising that’s boring and repetitive, like running). But maybe it’s also because the music triggers dopamine which helps counteract the pain, just like endorphins. But I agree with you — science must be very far away from being able to explain musical taste — why some music produces the pleasure effect and other music makes you spit up in your mouth. I have a feeling that will never be explained.
I’ve long considered music to be my first drug and it has proven to be the only one to stay potent through the test of time.
As for getting the chills, when I was younger songs like Judas Priest’s Beyond the Realms of Death and Skid Row’s In a Darkened Room would do it for me.
I said a few things in here for comedic effect, but truth be told, I completely understand the point about anticipating the arrival of certain riffs or choruses in beloved songs — and getting chills when they hit. One thing I’ve been wondering is WHY listening to music triggers this “pleasure effect”. In human evolution, was it a response that had some positive effect in the survival of the species, and if so, how?
Also, I cut a few passages from the original article to make this post a little bit shorter. One passage said that looking at artwork also triggers a dopamine response, which helps explain why people have created artwork since they lived in caves. I wonder if there’s an evolutionary explanation for that and what it might be.
Very interesting article. I hate having so many questions and hardly any answers, and I can’t just type many of my questions into Google either, lol. I want to know why/how manipulation of sound/noise produces positive responses in us and indeed results in, many times, attachment.
I agree, I would like to see the study done again with music and food that the subjects did not like, and also with vocals. I think MAYBE some people may get off on death grunts and others with Simone Simons because it may have to do with the fact that grunts in general sound a whole lot more negative and some of us have an innate fascination with what is deemed “negative”, even though many do not realize it because they say they are “normal, happy, positive” people. I don’t even know what I’m saying, I can’t explain myself. it sounds okay in my head, though, lol.
“Maybe bad music triggers endorphins, since they act to counteract pain.” Interesting point, but pain is released to tell ourselves that something is wrong with the body, therefore, fix it. So, does bad music really cause a chemical to be released that sends the signal that something harmful is being done to us? In jokes, we say yes. In seriousness, I don’t know, not a scientist. Still high school.
There’s so many variables, such as even the person’s frame of reference(like life experience that shapes how they view things) as many of us will respond to the same song differently, that this test would probably have to be done over and over including all the factors all of us have mentioned.
Also, about the artwork, thanks for including that because I had not known that. Isn’t it amazing the things we build because of what is pleasant for our brains.
It doesn’t take a scientific study to tell us what makes us feel good. What’s interesting about this study, and others, is the proof that “feeling good” is the product of the brain secreting chemicals, and that a variety of experiences trigger the release of the same chemicals. As you say, it’s amazing the things that people are driven to create because it’s pleasant for our brains. The big mystery to me is still why does the brain react in this way to some things and not others — to music and art, and from person to person, only certain kinds of music and art. And why do some of us feel pleasure from aggressive, morbid, nasty, howling music, whereas it makes other people want to run away? Why does that music kick the chemicals loose in our brains but has no effect in the brains of the less enlightened mass of humanity? Yes, I don’t think Google will have the answer to those questions.
“Less enlightened” haha, yes!
All of the answers to your questions can be answered thusly:
It’s the motherfuckin’ cube, man!
Fuck yes! It is so obvious, and I didn’t see it. “Darwin’s Minions” actually shows the Cube launch primitive man onto the path of heavy music. All questions have been answered!
This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George tries to eat the sandwich while porking some chick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHchl4AxsE0
Sheeit. Thas some dopamine-loading going on there. The trifecta!