Even when we don’t like the song playing, our brain wants to move to the music. (Studio Romantic/Shutterstock)

MONTREAL — Ever catch yourself unconsciously nodding along to music? That natural urge to move with rhythm, whether it’s tapping your foot under a desk or swaying on a dance floor, is what scientists call “groove.” Research suggests this response might be more hardwired into our bodies than previously thought. In fact, a new Canadian study shows that even people who don’t particularly enjoy music still feel this instinctive urge to move when they hear it.

The connection between music and movement runs deep in human culture. From tribal ceremonies to modern dance clubs, rhythmic movement has been a cornerstone of human social interaction. But scientists have long debated whether our urge to move with music is learned through culture or if it’s something more fundamental to our biology. Recent discoveries about how different people experience music are providing some surprising answers.

In a study published in PLOS One, researchers discovered that individuals with musical anhedonia, a condition where people don’t experience the typical pleasure response to music, still show normal urges to move when they hear rhythmic sounds. This finding challenges our understanding of how music affects the brain and suggests that movement might be more central to musical enjoyment than previously thought.

Musical anhedonia isn’t about being tone-deaf or having trouble understanding music. People with this condition can tell perfectly well whether a melody is happy or sad, recognize their national anthem, or spot a wrong note in a familiar tune. What makes them different is that music simply doesn’t give them the emotional buzz that most people experience. While most of us get a rush of pleasure from our favorite songs, people with musical anhedonia process the same sounds without the emotional reward.

The existence of musical anhedonia has puzzled scientists since its discovery. How could someone understand music perfectly well but not feel its emotional impact? The condition affects a subset of otherwise healthy individuals who enjoy other pleasurable experiences normally. They can appreciate art, enjoy good food, and form strong emotional connections; it’s just music that leaves them cold. This selective difference in how the brain processes musical pleasure has opened up new ways to study how humans experience music.

A research team spanning multiple institutions, led by scientists at Concordia University, set out to investigate whether this lack of musical pleasure would affect how people experience groove. They started with a simple question: if the pleasure of music and the urge to move are separate brain processes, might people with musical anhedonia still want to move to music even if they don’t enjoy it?

To find out, the team recruited 204 participants for an online study. After careful screening, they identified 17 individuals with musical anhedonia and compared them to 148 control participants (the remaining participants were excluded for various technical reasons or because they had other music-related conditions). The researchers were meticulous in ensuring that the musical anhedonia group didn’t have other conditions that might affect their response. They ruled out depression, general inability to feel pleasure, and problems with music perception.

Participants listened to a series of computer-generated piano sequences designed to vary in complexity. Some had simple, straightforward rhythms (think of a basic march), others had medium complexity (like a moderately syncopated jazz rhythm), and some were highly complex (imagine an unpredictable, irregular pattern). The same approach was taken with harmony, ranging from simple major chords to more complex jazz-like harmonies.

After each musical sample, participants rated both their pleasure and their urge to move on a 5-point scale. The results were surprising: people with musical anhedonia rated their experiences almost identically to the control group. Both groups preferred moderately complex rhythms over simple or highly complex ones, showing what scientists call an inverted U-shaped response.

“Normally, we would expect to see an inverted U-shaped response to rhythmic complexity, meaning that we want to move to music that is of medium complex rhythms as opposed to music that is very simple or very complex,” says lead author Isaac Romkey from Concordia University, in a statement.

When the researchers dug deeper into the data, they found that for people with musical anhedonia, their pleasure ratings were completely explained by their urge to move. It’s as if their enjoyment of the music came entirely from their desire to dance or move to it. In contrast, the control group seemed to derive pleasure both from the urge to move and from other aspects of the music itself.

“In the musical anhedonia group, we expected to see a flattening of that U-shaped curve, but that is not what we saw. That implies that for those with musical anhedonia, they derive pleasure from the urge to move. More generally, it suggests that the urge to move may itself generate pleasure,” says Romkey.

The research provides crucial insights into how our brains process music. Previous studies have shown that musical pleasure typically involves the brain’s reward system, the same circuits that respond to food, sex, and other fundamental pleasures. However, the urge to move to music appears to involve different neural pathways, particularly motor planning regions. This separation might explain why movement and pleasure responses can occur independently.

Many therapeutic approaches use rhythm and movement to help patients recover motor function or improve cognitive abilities. The discovery that the urge to move persists even in people who don’t enjoy music suggests these therapies might be effective regardless of a patient’s musical preferences or ability to derive pleasure from music.

The study also raises interesting questions about the evolution of music in human societies. If the urge to move to rhythm is more fundamental than musical pleasure itself, it might explain why rhythmic movement is found in virtually every human culture. Some researchers suggest that synchronized movement to rhythm might have played a crucial role in human social bonding, predating the development of complex musical traditions.

For the music industry and performers, these insights could influence how music is composed and performed. Understanding that rhythmic complexity plays a key role in engaging listeners’ motor systems, independent of other musical elements, might lead to new approaches in musical composition and performance.

This also extends to education. Traditional music education often focuses on developing an appreciation for melody, harmony, and musical structure. However, this research suggests that movement-based approaches might be more universally engaging, particularly for students who don’t naturally experience strong emotional responses to music.

Looking ahead, researchers plan to delve deeper into what exactly happens in the brain when experiencing the urge to move to music. While we now know that people with musical anhedonia maintain normal groove responses, future research using brain imaging techniques will help map out exactly how different brain regions contribute to our experience of music and movement.