We all know someone with wretched musical taste. No matter how much we try to help and educate, their idea of good music continues to suck. Maybe we need to use magnets instead.
According to researchers at McGill University in Montreal, magnets can be used to change your musical tastes in minutes through careful stimulation of the brain. They discovered that they could increase or decrease the enjoyment people derived from music. A little magnetic zap to the front of the brain was all it took.
Why? Dopamine. The transcranial magnetic stimulation either increased or decreased the amount of the body’s feel-good hormone as the music played. Stimulation as the music played increased the level of dopamine in the blood, increasing the level of pleasure the subjects derived from that music. And vice versa.
I should point out that the purpose of this research wasn’t to mess with our musical tastes but to find ways of stimulating the brain to combat things like depression, addiction and Parkinson’s.
Still…
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