Some People,completely Blind to Music!No Emotional Response to any kind of Music

I always feel a bit guilty about being such a board-lurker on this forum, especially since it has been so enormously helpful to me, but it's always hard for me to feel like I have anything of value to contribute. With this topic, however, I feel compelled to chime in. I noticed the article mentioning this study on the Sott page, and had quite a few mixed emotions about it; primarily, because the condition that the researchers describe sounds a lot like me. Also, because my lack of emotional response to music is something that I have been doing my best to avoid ever thinking about!

Until recently I'd assumed that my "music problem" was a harmless quirk that I could safely ignore. I just don't listen to music. I don't miss it when it's not there. I can't remember the last time I bought an album, or felt curious about a new music artist. I feel like I am happily unencumbered, being free from all that time and energy that people spend on music! If I'm really honest with myself, however, I have to admit that beneath all my reasoning there is something like a void of longing and embarrassment.

I was not always like this. I am actually really talented at music. I started playing the piano when I was 4. I went on to study classical piano all the way through high school, and after that taught myself to play the guitar. Technically, music makes a great deal of sense to me. I have perfect pitch. I can listen to a song on the radio and easily figure out how to play it in my head. When I was younger, I collected hundreds of albums. I was always listening to music. Over time, though, it all started to sound "flat." I pretended that nothing had changed for a while, but eventually I just gave up, and stopped listening to music entirely. Music simply didn't provide me with anything I wanted or needed.

Around the same period of time that my enjoyment of music went away (during my mid-20s) my enjoyment of everything else went away too, and I entered a long stretch of chronic depression and then, chronic alchoholism. Anhedonia was a big part of depression, and I felt like I was limited to just a handful of emotions: sadness, frustration, and dread. Anything else was just "numbness." While I was drinking, however, I could actually "feel" things, and I found that if I could get really rip-roaring drunk, I could actually experience enormous amounts of emotion while listening to music. But all this emotion would disappear when I woke up the next morning, and I would go back to my numb life of silence. Fifteen years later, I am slowly putting my life together, sober, and I've found that being happy and finding enjoyment in life requires honesty and effort. I am finally able to experience something like happiness and peace again, but for whatever reason, my reaction towards music is still "flat."

I'm not sure I have the same "music-specific anhedonia" that the researchers propose. I really don't know if this is something that can be fixed, or if I may have killed off the pertinent brain cells I require for "music appreciation," or if I should just be patient and hope for a love for music to appear. At this point, the pursuit of spiritual growth has become the most central part of my life. Doing The Work, painful as it can be sometimes, has finally made my life rewarding, and the best of those rewards have been the ability to feel the whole range of emotions that I was so afraid of before. I watch movies that affect me emotionally over and over, and the best part is that I can cry at the end! But, with music, I get nothing; it's still just orderly noise. So reading the comments in this thread proposing that people with no emotional response to music must be mechanical, or Organic Portals, or psychopaths was pretty troubling for me! My lack of pleasure listening to music continues to be a huge puzzle for me, but at the same time, my growing happiness at re-connecting with my own soul has given me so much to be thankful for.

Uh, Clem, I don't think you have anhedonia. I am also a music craze(I am able to play a few instruments, guitar the most), but that doesn't matter that I can't have long periods of time not listening to music. At one point I was even upset, because my mind has this ability to record big collections of songs, so whenever I heard a song, I could specify another song which had the same tunes(I even used to argue with people based on that). I stopped at one point because it affected my aim to create something unique, not a musical cliche. I have periods when I don't listen to music, because it's just getting in my head and it is very hard for me to stop having it played in the mind.

Maybe the fact that music is not real music anymore made you upset in some way or another.
But just think about it, not listening to music constantly is not such a bad thing. A couple of years ago(let's say at least 100 years, probably even in the present, given some geographical areas), people barely had the chance to hear a live concert, most of them couldn't afford. Music was not "always" present.

I don't know if what I think about what you said fits, did you give a shot to Gurdjieff's songs? They are very touching!
Here is one link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhVc8FHMFts

Uh said:

I always feel a bit guilty about being such a board-lurker on this forum, especially since it has been so enormously helpful to me, but it's always hard for me to feel like I have anything of value to contribute.

Click to expand...

I've had the same feeling in the beginning. It can be a huge impact when you choose to be part of a network with people that have great amounts of knowledge and understanding. I can even say I felt some sort of respect and due to that silly respect, I would just hold myself from having something to say, useful or not; it is that fear of "what if I fail? what if I will say something stupid?".
All I can tell you is that I make a lot of mistakes(I am still learning to use to forum tools), but it is an important part of a greater learning process. I think it is a waste of energy to feel guilty about it. Just do it, don't be reserved. I feel that everyone on this forum has something important to say, whether it is information from other sources or simply personal experience!

Hope this helps a bit!
Ed

edgitarra said:

I also found some info on brain connectivity and music:

If being musical relates to brain connectivity, does flat affect indicate the amount or location of psychopath brain connection defects?

“Perfect pitch” musicians have hyper white matter connectivity in areas relating to language and other social signals (Loui P, Schlaug G. Investigating musical disorders with diffusion tensor imaging: a comparison of imaging parameters. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2009 Jul;1169:121-5 (author manuscript); Loui P, Li HC, Hohmann A, Schlaug G. Enhanced Cortical Connectivity in Absolute Pitch Musicians: A Model for Local Hyperconnectivity. J Cogn Neurosci. 2010 Jun 1.).

But: Those with congenital amusia have a less active right inferior frontal gyrus as well as reduced connectivity with the auditory cortex as compared with controls. (Hyde et al. Functional MRI Evidence of an Abnormal Neural Network for Pitch Processing in Congenital Amusia.Cereb. Cortex.2010; 0: bhq094v1-bhq094)

Recall that the more highly one ranks on a psychopath checklist, the more disconnected the uncinate fasciculus white matter tracts. Flat affect, or monotone, is a sign that something’s not right, and along with apathy, is a symptom of psychotic illnesses. Your loyal bloggist has been told something about not being able to carry a tune in a bucket, but nevertheless we sing with feeling, particularly prison songs. Plus, there are plenty of jolly old psychopaths who talk with a nasally flat affect, perhaps raising or lowering the voice pitch a little, but unnaturally and with an emotion that’s a little “off.” And so, the white matter connections may not be the pitch perfect kind, but this empirical evidence indicates to us that feeling and pitch are perhaps parallel tracts, but separate ones. Perhaps where there’s flat affect along with amoral behavior, there is a global white matter defect, affecting all the tracts.

It would be interesting to see if olfaction is also disconnected in those who have congenital amusia.

Click to expand...

Current research has demonstrated dissociations between rhythm, melody, and emotional processing of music,[6] and amusia may include impairment of any combination of these skill sets.

Congenital amusia

Congenital amusia, commonly known as tone deafness, refers to a musical disability that cannot be explained by prior brain lesion, hearing loss, cognitive defects, or lack of environmental stimulation, and it affects about 4% of the population. Individuals who suffer from congenital amusia seem to lack the musical predispositions that most people are born with. They are unable to recognize or hum familiar tunes even though they have normal audiometry and above average intellectual and memory skills. Also, they do not show sensitivity to dissonant chords in a melodic context, which, as discussed earlier, is one of the musical predispositions exhibited by infants. The hallmark of congenital amusia is a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination, and this deficit is most apparent when congenital amusics are asked to pick out a wrong note in a given melody. If the distance between two successive pitches is small, congenital amusics are not able to detect a pitch change. As a result of this defect in pitch perception, a lifelong musical impairment may emerge due to a failure to internalize musical scales. A lack of fine-grained pitch discrimination makes it extremely difficult for amusics to enjoy and appreciate music, which consists largely of small pitch changes.

Click to expand...

It could be possible that psychopaths may not have emotional responses because they cannot distinguish between tunes.


EDIT: Text Modification

Click to expand...

Can you provide the sources?

Yes, sure! Sorry about not posting it earlier. Here it is
http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wordpress/2010/06/09/pitch-perfection-amusia-and-flat-affect-a-brain-connectivity-thing/

And for the congenital amusia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia#Congenital_amusia

By the way, there is another interesting link from neurologicalcorrelates:
http://neurologicalcorrelates.com/wordpress/2009/06/29/psychopaths-sociopaths-white-matter-unplugged/

EDIT: Link added

edgitarra said:

Uh, Clem, I don't think you have anhedonia. I am also a music craze(I am able to play a few instruments, guitar the most), but that doesn't matter that I can't have long periods of time not listening to music. At one point I was even upset, because my mind has this ability to record big collections of songs, so whenever I heard a song, I could specify another song which had the same tunes(I even used to argue with people based on that). I stopped at one point because it affected my aim to create something unique, not a musical cliche. I have periods when I don't listen to music, because it's just getting in my head and it is very hard for me to stop having it played in the mind.

Click to expand...

This description fits me too. Music moves me in a way that I haven't seen in anyone that I've been around, especially those describing themselves as music lovers. I have a really good ear for tunes & when I entered the music scene many years ago, this grew. I could tell so many distinguishing aspects of a composition (despite not being trained or being able to play an instrument) up to the point where I could tell if it would be successful in commercials or/& television series, movies.

Hearing similarities of songs is so easy, that I haven't thought of it since teenage years, but I was involved in "dance music" & it is very "samey", & repetitive ( most tunes were similar, allowing them to be mixed easily, anything mostly different stood out as almost unique) & getting tunes I didn't like out of my mind was difficult, mainly when modern music changed for the worse - around the year 2000-2001. Since then I hardly listen as it really does sound like just noise (mainly artists with voice modulation, worse when the tune is like this too) e.g. "if you believe in life after love" by Cher in the late 90s which was tolerable, now taken to extremes, sounds like a cacophony.

edgitarra said:

Maybe the fact that music is not real music anymore made you upset in some way or another.
But just think about it, not listening to music constantly is not such a bad thing. A couple of years ago(let's say at least 100 years, probably even in the present, given some geographical areas), people barely had the chance to hear a live concert, most of them couldn't afford. Music was not "always" present.[…]

Click to expand...

Yep. I imagine this is true for any music lover ( with a range of tastes, styles "old" & New) & having a constant narrative along with whatever is viewed as music is not necessarily good when undergoing brain retraining. These days I sing (can't help it, so it seems, though I've tried) everything I can remember, or hum it. Jazz, big band, soul, hip hop...

I just started a pretty interesting book (so far) about music. It is called "How Music REALLY Works 2nd Edition" and is written by Wayne Chase. So far it looks like a must read for anybody interested in music and/or how to play it and the larger aspects of it. It is a pretty large book as well, that covers many aspect that are usually not written about in regards to music and us humans. In fact, it seems the book is even broader then music alone, because he brings many other topics into why music works, such as linguistics and the evolutionary way how music has evolved in humans (or rather was a essential part of human evolution), and how it is wired in the brain and the genetic components of it.

Chapter 1.3.9 is a little recap of the Amusia, that was already discussed in the previous posts above.

Then follows Chapter 1.3.10 "WHERE IN THE BRAIN? MODULARITY AND UNIVERSAL LINGUISTIC GRAMMAR"

Followe by Chapter 1.3.11 "WHERE IN THE BRAIN? FOXP2 AND MYH16" in which he discusses two genes in humans and/or apes:

In 1990, Steven Pinker hypothesized that language evolved in humans by conventional Darwinian natural selection (Section 1.5 discusses natural selection). Chomsky, who first described brain-based universal grammar, did not go that far.

Twelve years later, in 2002, a team of German and British geneticists published genetic evidence strongly supporting Pinker. They discovered that a particular gene, FOXP2, plays a vital role in processing speech and grammar. FOXP2 exists in other primates such as the chimpanzee, but the human form of the gene differs. The human form may have appeared 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Communication by language gradually replaced communication by gesture. Language was the breakthrough technology that resulted in symbolic thinking and
the cultural explosion that defines what it is to be human.

If you happen to be born with abnormal human FOXP2, you will suffer from severe language impairment. That means that the normal human form is a naturally selected mutation, a “target of natural selection.” (A mutation is a randomly occurring change in the gene, resulting in a change in physiology or anatomy or even behaviour.) And that strongly indicates that the innate human capacity for effortless language learning is an adaptation, the product of Darwinian natural selection. About two million years ago, the hominid brain suddenly (in glacial evolutionary terms) began to get larger and larger, a process called encephalation. This did not occur in any of the other large primates, such as chimpanzees and gorillas. A mutation occurred in hominids around that time, a mutation that may have made encephalation possible.

A gene called MYH16, active in chimpanzees, ensures huge jaw muscle build-up, necessary for powerful chewing. These muscles constrict the skull, something like bungee cords, preventing growth in cranial capacity. In hominids, a mutation appeared line that deactivated MYH16. This may have freed the hominid skull to expand. And expand it did, tripling in size over the next 2 million years. To this day, chimpanzees still have the active version of MYH16 and comparatively small skulls. All humans have the deactivated human mutation of MYH16 and comparatively
huge skulls.

As well, there’s evidence of a connection between MYH16 and FOXP2. It turns out that if you have abnormal human FOXP2, you not only have grave cognitive language difficulties, but you also have physical problems with your mouth and jaw
muscles.

Taken together, the uniquely human variants of MYH16 and FOXP2 look like smoking-gun mutations with respect to encephalation and language development.

Click to expand...

He approaches the subject of music not as a believer nor as an atheist, as he says in Chapter 1.0.1:

1.0.1 PIQUING THE POLARIZED

Chapter 1 addresses these five basic questions about music:

1. WHAT is music?
2. WHO makes music?
3. WHERE does music come from?
4. WHEN did music get started?
5. WHY is there such a thing as music?

The other question, “HOW does one go about creating music worth listening to?” takes nine chapters to answer —Chapters 3 through 11, the main part of the book.

Tackling the five “Ws” of the phenomenon of music necessitates delving into Darwinian natural selection and sexual selection. If you have a strong religious faith,you may find bits of Chapter 1 offensive because of all the evolution stuff. On the other hand, if you have a strong atheistic belief, Chapter 1 may offend you, too, because it does not advocate for atheism.

If you already know all about natural selection and sexual selection and brainmodularity, then Chapter 1 might simply bore you. If so, why not grab a bag of chips and ride on ahead to Chapter 2, which discusses the rise of the Western popular music industry and its various genres. Or Chapters 3 through 11, the sections on how to create memorable, emotionally powerful music and lyrics[...]

Click to expand...

And then comes another fairly interesting part in Chapter 1.3.12, called "WHERE IN THE BRAIN? APHASIA":

1.3.12 WHERE IN THE BRAIN? APHASIA

Aphasia is the language equivalent of amusia, discussed a bit earlier. Aphasia refers to any of several disorders that result in loss of ability to communicate in speech or writing (or both).

There are two main types:

1. Broca’s Aphasia (also called expressive aphasia):

• If you have a stroke or otherwise suffer damage to a specific area of the left hemisphere called Broca’s area, you will have difficulty speaking. However, the content of what you’re saying, slow and disjointed as it may come out, will make sense. Interestingly, if you have Broca’s aphasia, you will have great difficulty reciting or speaking the words of a song you had learned before developing aphasia, but will usually be able to sing the words fluently.

2. Wernicke’s Aphasia (also called fluent aphasia):

•If you have a stroke or otherwise suffer damage to an area of the left hemisphere called Wernicke’s area, you will be able to speak fluently, but the content of what you’re saying will not make sense.

•Numerous politicians, some defence attorneys, Ann Coulter, television evangelists, many advertising copywriters, talk radio hosts, and talk radio callers appear to suffer from Wernicke’s aphasia.

Click to expand...

Well that reminds me strongly of what has been gathered about certain types of psychopathy and how they can speak fluently and fast but actually what they are saying doesn't make sense.

Anyway, the next chapter I'll read now is called "THE COMBINATORIAL NATURE OF MUSIC AND LANGUAGE"...