Getting High On GBz

So I just saw this article over at HypeFloats and just had to share it. According to research done by scientists on a recent project, listening to good music is like doing a psychoactive drug because of the feeling of euphoria. Now if that ain't awesome I don't know what is. Check out some of the article below and be sure to get your fix here at GBz.

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 single tone won't be pleasurable in isolation. However, a series of single tones arranged in time can become some of the most pleasurable experiences that humans have ever reported. That's amazing because it suggests that somehow our cerebral cortex is following these tones over time and there must be a component of build-up, anticipation, expectation."

 Full Article: Favorite Music Evokes...