Laura Ferreri
Cognitive neuroscientist who ran the rare thing in this field: a causal test.
Who they are
Ferreri and colleagues gave each participant a dopamine precursor, a dopamine antagonist and a placebo in three separate sessions, while they listened to music, and measured what happened to pleasure and motivation.
Almost everything else in this literature is a correlation between a brain measure and a self-report taken at the same moment, from people who knew they were in a music study.
Key papers
Ferreri, L., Mas-Herrero, E., Zatorre, R. J., Ripollés, P., Gómez-Andrés, A., Alicart, H., Olivé, G., Marco-Pallarés, J., Antonijoan, R. M., Valle, M., Riba, J., & Rodríguez-Fornells, A. (2019). Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music. PNAS, 116(9), 3793-3798.
Key ideas
Levodopa, the dopamine precursor, increased both the hedonic experience of the music and music-related motivational responses against placebo.
Risperidone, the antagonist, reduced both.
The authors conclude a causal role for dopamine in musical pleasure, and suggest dopaminergic transmission may play different or additive roles in abstract cognitive activities than affective processing had assumed.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1073/pnas.1811878116