阿明 中国:【探索频道】为什么音乐让人快乐~

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于2011-01-11 17:19:27翻译 | 已有2068人浏览 | 有0人评论

听音乐时会分泌多巴胺，这是种与上瘾相关的化学物质，让人感觉快乐。

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内容概要

Listening to moving music causes the brain to release dopamine, a feel-good chemical. 

听着流动的音乐，脑部会分泌多巴胺，让人感觉愉悦。

Dopamine-induced pleasure may help explain why music has been such a big part of human societies throughout history. 

由多巴胺带来的对快乐的感受，在一定程度上解释了为什么音乐在人类社会历史上占据如此重要的地位。

Understanding why people like listening to music is helping scientists understand human pleasure. 

科学家们在了解人们为什么喜欢听音乐后，将更好的去认知人类对快乐的感受。

Music makes you feel happy by releasing the feel-good chemical, dopamine.

通过让脑部分泌多巴胺这一带来快感的化学物，音乐让人快乐。

People love music for much the same reason they're drawn to sex, drugs, gambling and delicious food, according to new research. When you listen to tunes that move you, the study found, your brain releases dopamine, a chemical involved in both motivation and addiction. 

根据新研究，人们喜爱音乐和他们沉溺性欲、毒品、赌博、美食等的因由并无二致。研究表明，如果听到的曲调触动了你，大脑就会分泌多巴胺，一种与冲动、上瘾相关的化学物质。

Even just anticipating the sounds of a composition like Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" or Phish's "You Enjoy Myself" can get the feel-good chemical flowing, found the study, which was the first to make a concrete link between dopamine release and musical pleasure. 

甚至只是在脑海中想着音乐声，不论是维瓦尔第（Vivaldi）的四季，又或者费西合唱团（Phish）的你好好爱我（You Enjoy Myself），研究发现都会让人产生这种感觉快乐的物质。这也是第一次在多巴胺分泌和音乐享受间建立一种具体的联系。

The findings offer a biological explanation for why music has been such a major part of major emotional events in cultures around the world since the beginning of human history. Through music, the study also offers new insights into how the human pleasure system works. 

始于人类历史开端，音乐一直在世界重大文化情感事件中占据如此重要地位。这项发现为此提供了生物学上的解释。通过音乐，研究还为人类愉悦系统如何运作提供了新的理解。

"You're following these tunes and anticipating what's going to come next and whether it's going to confirm or surprise you, and all of these little cognitive nuances are what's giving you this amazing pleasure," said Valorie Salimpoor, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal. "The reinforcement or reward happens almost entirely because of dopamine." 

蒙特利尔麦吉尔大学神经系统科学家Valorie Salimpoor表示：“随着音乐的抑扬，人会预期接下来会是什么样的曲调，是与预期一致还是带来惊喜，而正是这些细微的认知差别给人带来了无与伦比的快乐。这种快乐的加强几乎全因多巴胺的分泌。”

"This basically explains why music has been around for so long," she added. "The intense pleasure we get from it is actually biologically reinforcing in the brain, and now here's proof for it."

“这基本解释了为什么音乐长期存在，”她补充道。“从生物学角度看，我们从中获得的强烈的快感实际不断在我们脑中强化，而现在这就是证据。”

In a previous study, Salimpoor and colleagues linked music-induced pleasure with a surge in intense emotional arousal, including changes in heart rate, pulse, breathing rate and other measurements. Along with these physical changes, people often report feelings of shivers or chills. When that happens during a listening experience, Salimpoor's group and others have found evidence that blood flows to regions in the brain involved in dopamine release. 

在此前的一项研究中，Salimpoor和同事在音乐带来的快感和情绪亢奋之间建立联系，测量值包括心率、脉搏、呼吸率等。伴随着以上生理变化，人们还常反馈说会觉得打颤。当这些现象出现在听音乐体验过程中时，Salimpoor小组以及其他同事找到了证据：血液流向了脑部分泌巴多胺的部位。

To solidify the dopamine link, the researchers recruited eight music-lovers, who brought to the lab samples of music that gave them chills of pleasure. Most picks were classical, with some jazz, rock and popular music mixed in, including Led Zeppelin and Dave Matthews Band. The most popular selection was Barbar's Adagio for Strings. 

为使多巴胺联系理论更具说服力，研究人员聘请了八位音乐爱好者，让他们给实验室带去给他们快感颤抖的音乐。大多数选择了古典音乐，当中也有部分是爵士、摇滚和流行音乐，包括齐柏林飞艇（Led Zeppelin）和大卫马修乐队（Dave Matthews Band）。其中最多人选择的是巴伯（Samuel Barbar）的弦乐柔板（Adagio for Strings）。

After 15 minutes of listening, scientists injected participants with a radioactive substance that binds to dopamine receptors. With a machine called a PET scanner, the scientists were then able to see if that substance simply circulated through listeners' blood, which would indicate that they had already released a lot of dopamine, and that the dopamine was tying up all available receptors. 

在15分钟的音乐体验后，科学家为参加者注射能依附多巴胺感受器的放射性物质。通过PET扫描仪，科学家能够观察到这些物质是否仅是在听者的血液中循环。如果是肯定的话，这意味着他们已经大量分泌巴多胺，并且已经依附可找到的感受器。

If most of their dopamine receptors were free, on the other hand, the radioactive substance would bind to them. 

从另一方面来说，如果大多数的巴多胺感受器处于空闲，那么放射性物质将会继续依附其上。

The technique showed, definitively for the first time, that people's brains released large amounts of dopamine when they listened to music that gave them chills, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience. When the same people listened to less moving music the next day, their dopamine receptors remained wide open.

研究人员在期刊《自然神经科学》中发表文章，显然，通过技术首次发现，人类大脑当听到给予他们快感的音乐时会分泌大量多巴胺。即使到第二天同样的人听没那么触动的音乐，他们的多巴胺感受器依然保持较大的开放幅度。

Once the researchers knew for sure that dopamine was behind the pleasure of music, they put participants in an fMRI machine and played the moving music for them again. In this part of the experiment, the scanners showed that the brain pumped out both during the phase of musical anticipation and at the moment when chills hit in full force. The two surges happened in different areas of the brain.

当研究人员肯定多巴胺必然带来音乐快感后，他们马上让参加者进入fMRI机器，并再次播放那些触动过他们的歌。实验进行到这一部分，扫描仪显示大脑同时在预想音乐和打颤最强烈的瞬间大量分泌巴多胺。而这又是发生在大脑的不同区域的。

"It is amazing that we can release dopamine in anticipation of something abstract, complex and not concrete," Salimpoor said. "This is the first study to show that dopamine can be released in response to an aesthetic stimulus."

“我们能在预期一些抽象复杂事物时分泌巴多胺，这真令人惊叹。”Salimpoor说。“能说明多巴胺对美的事物的刺激作出反应并分泌，这是首项研究。”

The findings suggest that, like sex and drugs, music may be mildly addictive, said David Huron, a music cognition researcher at Ohio State University, Columbus. 

哥伦比亚俄亥俄州立大学音乐认知研究人员David Huron说，这项发现显示，像性和毒品，音乐在嗜瘾方面来说可能是温和的。

Dopamine is an adaptive reward-inducing molecule that makes animals want to look for food before they're hungry. It's what makes it impossible for some people to pass by the neighborhood bakery without going in to buy a tart. And it provides a rush for heroin addicts when they see blood enter the needle -- before the drug even gets into their veins. 

多巴胺是一种奖励诱导的自适分子，让动物在感觉饥饿前觅食。这就是为什么一些人经过临近面包店时总忍不住买个蛋挞什么的。而这也使瘾君子在看到血液流进针管时产生一种快感——甚至连海洛因都还没有进到他们血管中去。

In its groundbreaking combination of techniques, Huron said, the study also offers a new way to study the relationship between dopamine and feelings of motivation, reward and pleasure. Brain scanners are notoriously expensive for scientists and claustrophobic for participants, with no room for people to do things like eat in them. 

对于所采用的开创性技术，Huron认为，这项研究还为探讨多巴胺与冲动、奖励、快感的关系提供了新的方法。然而，众所周知的是，脑部扫描仪对科学家来说始终是太昂贵了，也对实验者带来幽闭空间恐惧，狭小的空间让里面的人做不了其他事情，像吃东西也不可能实习。

Music, on the other hand, can be pumped right in to the machine, and scientists can then look at pleasure responses on a note-by-note basis.

另一方面，音乐却可以无障碍进入仪器中，之后科学家只需享受地观察仪表上一个又一个的数据即可。

"Music is going to be a useful tool in trying to explain all sorts of aspects of pleasure, addiction and maladaptive behaviors," Huron said. "It's a technical tour de force what they've done. I just think it's a really wonderful piece of work."

“音乐将会成为解释快感、嗜瘾和适应不良行为各个方面的利器，”Huron说道。“这是一次技术支援实验之旅。我认为这确实是一次成功的实验。”