4 chords

So this is a video that's kinda been in the back of my mind since college.

When I was sitting in my Intro to Music Therapy class, my professor (who was involved in one of the cited studies) said, "you know, there's evidence that all you have to do to be a good composer is delay any gratification in your piece, and then you can trigger a dopaminergic response in your listener's brain"
To which I immediately thought "psh, BS, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.  If that were true it'd be the only thing we talking about during comp studio."

But 4 years, and countless hours spent on google later, I think he might be right.

Which is kinda like, startling?

Because, if music actually does release dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway, or even at the very least the striatum (ALL of the research mentions modulation in the Nucleus Accumbens (which is in the ventral striatum)), then there can potentially be very real practical, therapeutic applications for this.

Major Depressive Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Parkinson's disease are all related in that they involve, to some degree, a lack of dopamine in the system, which can be demonstrated in the way the patients react to a rewarding stimulus.

And MDD and PTSD at the very least, have been proven to alter the biology of the Striatum:
https://youtu.be/eC_DFKb1T_o?t=26m47s

Meaning that one of two things (or I guess both) are possible:

1. The inability to enjoy music, or at the very least enjoy music in the way I outlined here, could be an early indicator for MDD, PTSD, or even PD.

2. Being trained in a basic understanding of music, and subsequently given a "prescription" of music, could help early onset dopamine-related disease patients the same way more traditional music therapy techniques help delay the rate of decay in the motor cortex for Parkinson's patients, and help recondition connections like we see in Musical Therapy techniques used for Aphasia.

I'm not saying that listening to music could help cure these diseases, but maybe they could help?

I haven't found any research on the subject.
The oldest study that even barely mentions dopamine and it's relationship to music enjoyment is from 1980.

So all of this is basically brand new information for the science community.

So if any of you have connections to a neuroscience graduate program, hit me up so I can embarrass myself in front of the smarter STEM majors!

But as always, thank you for the continued support.

I literally could not do this without you.