Have you ever met someone who just wasn’t into music? They may have a condition called specific musical anhedonia, which affects three-to-five percent of the population.

　　你有没有遇到过一些人，他们就是不喜欢音乐?他们或许患有一种被称作特异性音乐快感缺乏症的疾病，这样的人在全球总人口中占3%到5%。

　　Researchers at the University of Barcelona (Spain) and the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University (Canada) have discovered that people with this condition showed reduced functional connectivity between cortical regions responsible for processing sound and subcortical regions related to reward.

　　西班牙巴塞罗那大学、加拿大蒙特利尔神经学研究所和麦基尔大学医院的研究人员发现，患这种病的人，他们负责处理声音的脑皮层区域与处理奖赏的皮层下区域之间的连通性较弱。

　　To understand the origins of specific musical anhedonia, researchers recruited 45 healthy participants who completed a questionnaire measuring their level of sensitivity to music and divided them into three groups of sensitivity based on their responses. The test subjects then listened to music excerpts inside an fMRI machine while providing pleasure ratings in real-time. To control for their brain response to other reward types, participants also played a monetary gambling task in which they could win or lose real money.

　　为了理解这种特异性音乐快感缺乏症的根源，研究人员招募了45位健康人士完成了一份测试其对音乐敏感度的问卷，根据测试结果将他们分成了三组，接着给被试组分别在功能性磁共振成像机内聆听一段音乐，并实时提供快乐评级。为了控制在其他奖励类型时大脑的反应，参与者还用真钱玩起了赌博。

　　Using the fMRI data, the researchers found that while listening to music, specific musical anhedonics presented a reduction in the activity of the nucleus accumbens, a key subcortical structure of the reward network. The reduction was not related to a general improper functioning of the nucleus accumbens itself, since this region was activated when they won money in the gambling task.

　　分析功能性磁共振成像数据发现，特异性音乐快感缺乏症患者听音乐时，奖赏系统的关键皮层下结构伏隔核的活动较弱。这种减弱并不意味着伏隔核本身功能失常，因为当这些患者在赌博中赢钱时，该区域就被激活。

　　Specific musical anhedonics, however, did show reduced functional connectivity between cortical regions associated with auditory processing and the nucleus accumbens. In contrast, individuals with high sensitivity to music showed enhanced connectivity.

　　不过，特异性音乐快感缺乏症患者处理声音的皮层区域与伏隔核的连通性却减弱了。相比之下，对音乐高度敏感的人二者之间的连通性增强了。

　　The fact that subjects could be insensible to music while still responsive to another stimulus like money suggests different pathways to reward for different stimuli. This finding may pave the way for the detailed study of the neural substrates underlying other domain-specific anhedonias and, from an evolutionary perspective, help us to understand how music acquired reward value.

　　研究参与者对音乐麻木，却对金钱等其他刺激物产生反应的事实说明针对不同刺激物，奖赏通路不同。这一发现或许能为详细研究其他快感缺乏症的神经学机制打下基础，且能从革命性视角帮助我们理解音乐是如何获得奖赏价值的。

　　Lack of brain connectivity has been shown to be responsible for other deficits in cognitive ability. Studies of children with autism spectrum disorder, for example, have shown that their inability to experience the human voice as pleasurable may be explained by a reduced coupling between the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus and distributed nodes of the reward system, including the nucleus accumbens.

　　大脑连通性缺失也与认知能力的其他缺陷相关。比如，针对泛自闭症障碍儿童开展的研究显示，他们之所以不能从人类的声音中体会快乐，可能是因为后颞上沟与伏隔核等奖赏系统的分布式节点连通不足。

　　"These findings not only help us to understand individual variability in the way the reward system functions, but also can be applied to the development of therapies for treatment of reward-related disorders, including apathy, depression, and addiction," says Robert Zatorre, a Montreal Neurological Institute neuroscientist and one of the paper’s co-authors.

　　该研究论文的合著作者之一、蒙特利尔神经学研究所的神经学家罗伯特.扎托雷说：“这些研究成果不仅帮助我们理解奖赏系统运行方式的个体差异，还可用于开发治疗冷漠、抑郁和成瘾等与奖赏有关疾病的方法。”

（编辑：何莹莹）