This paper had been on my to-do list for a while. Not only because it is intellectually interesting – though it has less direct to do with education than much of what I usually write – but also because it explains something I have carried with me all my life.

I am an active musician myself. For me, music is not background noise. It is a way of thinking, of feeling, and sometimes of making sense of what is happening. At the same time, I had a dear uncle, Clement, who seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with music. No dislike. No confusion. Just… nothing. As if music simply never arrived.

For years, I assumed this was a matter of taste. Or culture. Or perhaps character. Until I read a recent review article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences by Mas-Herrero, Marco-Pallarés, Zatorre, and colleagues, and suddenly realised: this, too, can be explained neurobiologically.

The starting point of the article is simple, and once you think about it, very familiar. We often assume that reward sensitivity is a general trait. People who are sensitive to pleasure are more or less sensitive across the board: food, social interaction, art, and music. But that turns out not to be the case. People differ not only in how much pleasure they experience, but also in where that pleasure comes from. Music is a particularly revealing case.

A small but consistent group of people experiences little to no pleasure from music, despite having perfectly normal hearing and enjoying other kinds of rewards. Good food, for example. Or social interaction. This condition is known as specific musical anhedonia. It is not depression. Not a general emotional flattening. It is very precise: music does nothing.

What the research shows is that this is not because these people “do not understand” music, or cannot recognise emotions in it. Their general reward system functions normally. The problem appears to lie in the connection. In most people, auditory regions in the brain communicate smoothly with the reward system, particularly the nucleus accumbens (a term that meant little to me as well). Music activates expectation, surprise, and recognition, and these signals are passed on to systems that release dopamine and other reward-related neurotransmitters. That is where the pleasure lies.

In people with specific musical anhedonia, this transfer is less effective. The music is perceived, but it does not sufficiently engage the reward system. It is as if the soundtrack is present, but never produces goosebumps. Everything works technically, yet nothing extra happens emotionally.

That struck me more than I expected. Suddenly, something clicked about my uncle Clement. He was not a cynic. Not culturally indifferent. He simply lacked that bridge between sound and reward. Music affected him in much the same way wallpaper, or watching football, affects me: you see it, you register it, but it does not move you.

One of the strengths of this research is that it invites a more generous way of thinking about taste and culture. “Everyone loves music, don’t they?” Apparently not. And that is not a deficit, nor a lack of depth or sensitivity. It is a variation in how our brains connect information to reward.

At the same time, this may help musicians, teachers, and parents let go of certain assumptions. Music can be deeply moving. It can regulate emotions, create connections, and strengthen memory. But not for everyone, and not in the same way. And that is fine.

Some people hear music. Others feel it. And for some, neither really happens.