Why does listening to music do nothing for me?

We tend to think of musical enjoyment as universal – after all, music features in every culture around the globe, and even tiny babies love jiggling and giggling along to a beat. But this sweeping generalisation ignores the approximately 5 to 10 per cent of people, like you, who have ‘musical anhedonia’ and derive no pleasure from music. So you are certainly not alone.

People with musical anhedonia tend to be able to enjoy other aesthetic outlets, such as reading, films and art, and they don’t have a problem comprehending music. They just have no emotional response to it (people with ‘amusia’, in contrast, have difficulty recognising musical tones, but can still be emotionally moved by music).

Research into musical anhedonia is relatively new – the term was only coined in 2011. Initial findings suggest the roots of it lie with having weaker-than-usual connections between the auditory cortex and the brain’s reward centres, which are also involved in our enjoyment of food, sex and money.

Read more:

• Can you train your brain to like different music?
• Why do people have such different music tastes?
• Are talents genetic or learnt?
• How can music change our mood?