Masters of Health Magazine July 2018 | Page 36

Dopamine is a common neurotransmitter in the brain. It is released in response to rewarding human activity and is linked to reinforcement and motivation – these include activities that are biologically significant such as eating and sex. Dr Robert Zatorre said: “We needed to be sure that we could find people who experienced ‘chills’ very consistently and reliably. That is because once we put them in the scanner, if they did not get ‘chills’ then we would have nothing to measure. The other important factor was that we wanted to eliminate any potential confound from verbal associations.

So, we used only instrumental music. This eliminated many of the original sample of people since the music they brought in that gave them chills had lyrics.”

Music psychologist, Dr Vicky Williamson, from Goldsmiths College, University of London, welcomed the paper. She said, “The research didn’t answer why music was so important to humans – but proved that it was, and showed that music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems.”

Even if we don’t understand the exact mechanisms we do observe the positive effects and therefore the value of listening to enjoyable music. Even though the conditions of this study were fairly selective in order to be able to accurately measure the levels of dopamine, it can be extrapolated that these effects would be present in other

individuals to a greater or lesser degree even if not measurable.

An abstract in PubMed.gov – May 6, 2004 indicated that since music can boost dopamine levels, listening to music has even been shown to help people with Parkinson’s disease improve their fine motor control.

Music may not be able to cure all our ills, but it certainly has many benefits for our health and wellbeing. The more we observe and experiment, the more connections we

find between music and its effects on our physiology. And besides, music is enjoyable

both to create and to listen to. It is an essential element to our fabric of life.

Author’s Note:

Please feel free to send me any articles pertaining to this subject that you wish to

share: [email protected]

“The research didn’t answer why music was so important to humans – but proved that it was, and showed that music is inextricably linked with our deepest reward systems.”