Music softens the mores say. Or at least she often manages to make us vibrate. But this is not the case for the world. If music has been a universal language for 40,000 years, both stimulating or moving, a minority of individuals has nothing to do with it. Their hearing is normal, they experience pleasure in other areas, but music does not bring them anything. This phenomenon has a name: themusical anhedonia.
Insensitive … only to music
For a long time, the researchers thought that the ability to feel pleasure was global and was declined in the same way in the face of different stimuli. But a decade ago, a team from the University of Barcelona upset this vision by identifying the “specific musical anhedonia”. Unlike a general anhedonia (where we do not feel pleasure anywhere), the persons concerned remain sensitive to other awards, whether social, gustatory or financial … But remain indifferent to music. But why?
A broken link with the brain
The recent work by Josep Marco-Pallares and his colleagues, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences In July 2025, highlighted the origin of this phenomenon. According to them, the musical anhedonia does not result from a dysfunction of hearing, but from a disconnection between the hearing network and the brain reward circuit.
To identify this disorder, the researchers designed Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ). This tool explores five dimensions: the capacity of music to arouse emotions, regulate mood, promote social ties, encourage movement (dance, rhythm) and stimulate curiosity (discovery, collection). People with musical anhedonia generally obtain low scores in all these categories: they do not choose favorite songs, rarely feel musical chills and react little to melodies.
- In itself, in a listener “Lambda”, listen to a pleasant song active, in particular the core accumbens, a key area of pleasure and motivation;
- In an anhedonic person, MRI reveals a reduced response to music, while other awards, such as money, trigger normal reactions.
“A similar mechanism could explain individual differences in responses to other gratifying stimuli”underlines Josep Marco-Pallares. The study of these circuits could also enlighten disorders linked to reward such as addiction, eating disorders or certain forms of anhedonia.
An origin still mysterious to this insensitive rope
Why does this disorder develop? The precise causes remain vague, however. Researchers are advancing a combination of genetic and environmental factors. According to some estimates, around 5 % of cases are congenital, while others may result from brain damage. Overall, the musical anhedonia would affect between 3 and 5 % of the world’s population. If this is your case, you are therefore not alone.
The musical anhedonia also recalls that music does not speak to everyone. And that a person who prefers silence to the pretty notes of music is not necessarily this insensitive that you believe.