February 21, 2017.
A study conducted by Canadian researchers at McGill University and published in the medical journal Scientific Reports, has just demonstrated that musical pleasure triggers the same chemical reaction in our body as that triggered by an orgasm or taking a drug.
Musical pleasure comparable to sexual pleasure?
It is difficult to measure the intensity of a pleasure as it is so subjective. However, Canadian scientists at McGill University were able, thanks to their experiments, prove that the pleasure experienced when listening to a piece that you enjoy triggers the same neurological and chemical mechanism as that used by sexual pleasure, or by taking a drug or tasty food. Opioids in the brain are stimulated as in an orgasm.
For their study, the scientists worked with seventeen healthy people. The patients took a medicine called Naltrexone. The opioids are then selectively and temporarily blocked. This treatment, usually prescribed for people suffering from addiction, blocks all feelings of pleasure. Result: the seventeen volunteers did not feel any satisfaction in listening to their favorite piece. When you unblock opioids, the feeling comes back, the pleasure too.
Is music a drug?
These results are for them a great advance in the understanding of addiction phenomena and the functioning of the brain in certain pleasure situations. Daniel Levitin, lead author of the study, has conducted several studies on how the brain perceives music. For him, this was ” the most demanding and the most difficult “.
So should we be wary of music if it acts like a drug in us? The pleasure of listening to a song is not in itself bad. It is not comparable to an addictive phenomenon : it does not destroy health or social relations, it does not exclude those who listen to it … We can then consume it without moderation!
Maylis Choné
Read also: Music: a wide range of health benefits
