Dancing to music that you don't enjoy? How your brain separates groove from musical pleasure

Ever found yourself tapping your foot to a beat without even thinking about it? A new study from Concordia University suggests that the urge to move to music, known as groove, is a natural response, separate from whether you actually enjoy the music.

Researchers made this discovery by studying people with musical anhedonia, a condition where individuals feel little to no pleasure from music. Surprisingly, even though they didn’t find the music enjoyable, they still had a strong urge to move when listening to rhythmic beats.

Grooving can happen without enjoyment

Most people assume that moving to music is a result of enjoying it, but this study suggests otherwise. Even people with musical anhedonia, who feel little to no pleasure from music, still experience a strong urge to move when exposed to rhythmic beats. This means that groove, the instinct to tap, sway, or dance, is not necessarily linked to how much we like a song. Instead, it appears to be a built-in response driven by the brain’s motor system.

Researchers found that when participants rated how much they enjoyed the music and how much it made them want to move, the two responses didn’t always align. Those with musical anhedonia reported low pleasure scores but still showed a normal groove response. This suggests that rhythm stimulates the brain’s movement-related circuits independently of the pleasure centers.

The different brain circuits at work

The brain processes rhythm and musical enjoyment in separate areas, which explains why people can still feel the urge to move even if they don’t find music pleasurable. This study highlights the roles of two key brain regions:

1. Dorsal striatum: The movement centre

   • This part of the brain is primarily involved in motor control and habit formation.

   • It plays a crucial role in movement coordination and is activated when we tap our feet, nod our heads, or dance in response to a beat.

   • The study suggests that groove—the instinct to move to music—is driven by the dorsal striatum, making it an automatic response, rather than something dependent on musical enjoyment.

2. Ventral striatum: The pleasure and reward centre

   • This region is responsible for processing feelings of pleasure and reward.

   • It helps regulate motivation, emotional responses, and goal-directed behavior, influencing why we find certain experiences enjoyable.

   • Previous research has shown that when people hear music they love, the ventral striatum releases dopamine, creating a pleasurable response.

Why this matters

Since these two brain regions operate independently, someone with musical anhedonia, who has a less active ventral striatum when listening to music, can still have a normal groove response because their dorsal striatum is working well.

In other words, even if a song doesn’t excite or emotionally engage someone, their body may still react to the beat. This could explain why people instinctively tap their feet to music in stores, at events, or even when they aren’t paying full attention to the sound. It also hints at the possibility that movement itself might create its own kind of pleasure, separate from musical joy.

The study suggests that movement itself may generate pleasure, even when the music doesn’t. If you’ve ever danced to a song you didn’t particularly like, your brain’s movement system might be rewarding you in unexpected ways.

This challenges the idea that musical enjoyment and movement always go hand in hand. It also raises intriguing questions about how rhythm influences the brain and body—whether we love music or not.

So, next time you catch yourself unconsciously moving to a beat, know that it’s simply your brain responding to rhythm in its own way.