Ever had goosebumps or felt euphoric chills when listening to a
piece of music? If so, your brain is reacting to the music in
the same way as it would to some delicious food or a
psychoactive drug such as cocaine, according to scientists. The
experience of pleasure is mediated in all these situations by
the release of the brain's reward chemical, dopamine, according
to results of experiments carried out by a team led by Valorie
Salimpoor of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which are
published today in Nature Neuroscience. Music seems to tap into
the circuitry in the brain that has evolved to drive human
motivation – any time we do something our brains want us to do
again, dopamine is released into these circuits. "Now we're
showing that this ancient reward system that's involved in
biologically adaptive behaviours is being tapped into by a
cognitive reward," said Salimpoor. She said music provided an
intellectual reward, because the listener has to follow the
sequence of notes to appreciate it. "A singl