‘Cocaine (all around my brain)’

Who doesn’t know this JJ Cale song? Eric Clapton and others have performed it as well, and it is often mooted as an anti-drug song. The link between music and pleasure seems an obvious notion to many people. A recent publication in Nature Neurogenetics¹ by researchers at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada has given this notion some scientific backing. They detected elevated dopamine² levels in the brains of people listening to their favourite music. In some cases their dopamine level was 21% above normal. So JJ Cale knew it all along: music is like cocaine, it can raise your dopamine levels.

Music and pleasure: how does this stack up from an evolutionary point of view? It has been shown that dopamine levels increase in male birds when they sing to attract female birds³. That makes sense if you want to get as many descendants as possible and to keep your genes ‘alive’. But what about the human situation? Did Romeo get a kick out of serenading Juliet? Do we get tickled by singing in a choir or a sing-along at a concert? What advantage does it give humans to sing (well)? Giving pleasure to others and yourself may have some cultural benefits but in a Darwinian sense? What does it do for the survival of the species? I am certain that it has a valid evolutionary explanation. So, if you know of any enlightening research in this field please mail me (or sing it time). Thanks.

¹ http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn.2726.html

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine

³ Singing To Females Makes Male Birds’ Brains Happy. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 6, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/10/081003122545.htm

Peter Hoeben