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Favourite music evokes same feelings as good food or drugs. Ever had goosebumps or felt euphoric chills when listening to a piece of music?

Favourite music evokes same feelings as good food or drugs

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.

The pieces chosen ranged from classical to rock, punk and electronic dance music.

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