Some people are ‘wired to connect with music on a deeper level,’ study of 9,000 twins finds

Some people get the chills or feel moved to tears when listening to certain songs, while others tend to experience a less-intense reaction to music. Now, a new study hints that your level of music enjoyment may be partially written in your genes.

According to a study published March 25 in the journal Nature Communications, 54% of the differences in the levels of music enjoyment between individuals can be attributed to their genes. The scientists behind the work attribute the remaining percentage to environmental factors such as growing up in a family that played musical instruments or listened to music together, as well as other, past music-related experiences.

“This study explores something many of us in music have long suspected — some people are just wired to connect with music on a deeper level,” Mitchell Hutchings, an associate professor of voice at Florida Atlantic University who was not involved with the work, told Live Science in an email.

Through statistical modelling, the study also found that different genetic factors influence different aspects of music enjoyment, such as how music affects a person’s mood, the pleasure people get from moving to a beat, or the bonds people form through shared musical experiences.

Related: Google’s ‘mind-reading’ AI can tell what music you listened to based on your brain signals

“The idea that different genetic pathways influence things like emotional connection to music, dancing, or playing with others also fits what we see in real life,” Hutchings said. “For example, some singers are drawn to expression, some to rhythm, and others thrive in collaborative settings.” So those involved in making music are also drawn to the art form for different reasons.

To explore the role of genetics in music enjoyment, Giacomo Bignardi, a doctoral candidate in cognitive neuroscience, and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands studied data from more than 9,000 twins ages 37 to 64. The data was pulled from the Swedish Twin Registry, a large-scale medical research resource. In all, the study included around 3,400 identical twins and 5,600 nonidentical twins.

Identical twins share nearly 100% of their DNA, while nonidentical twins share about 50%. Therefore, comparing aspects of musical enjoyment in different twin pairs enabled the researchers to estimate the influence of genetics. If the identical twins experienced more similar levels of music enjoyment than fraternal twins did, genetics must play a role in that experience, the researchers surmised, and they wanted to estimate the extent of that genetic influence.

To measure people’s level of music enjoyment, the researchers used the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire, which asks participants to rate how strongly they agree with 20 statements, on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Some statements included “Music calms and relaxes me,” “When I hear a tune I like a lot, I can’t help tapping or moving to its beat,” and “When I share music with someone, I feel a special connection.”

Identical twins showed more than twice the similarity in music enjoyment than nonidentical twins did, on average, suggesting that genetics does play a significant role in shaping how much pleasure people get from music.

However, one limitation of the study is that it relied on the assumption that twins have the same level of musical exposure, by virtue of being raised in the same household. As such, the researchers assumed, any differences in music enjoyment would be due to genetics, rather than attributed to environmental factors.

But the researchers acknowledged that this assumption does not always hold. For instance, one twin might seek out more musical experiences than the other — say, attending music classes or concerts — which would likely shape their musical enjoyment.

Another limitation lies in the study’s homogeneous population. “Because the twin study was performed in Swedish twins, studies in different countries are needed to see if the same relative effects of genes and environment are observed in different cultures,” Michelle Luciano, a professor in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, told Live Science in an email.

The researchers also tested the participants’ abilities to distinguish between melodies, rhythms and pitches — musical skills that were previously linked to genetic factors. Separately, they also assessed participants’ overall responsiveness to rewards and positive outcomes, a trait known as “reward sensitivity.” This helped the team determine whether genetics was tied specifically to music enjoyment, rather than to the twins’ musical perception skills or a broader tendency to enjoy rewarding stimuli.

The results showed that much of the genetic influence over music enjoyment — about 70% — was not related to musical skills or reward sensitivity.

This mirrors Hutchings’ real-life observations. “I’ve seen students who aren’t particularly driven by external rewards but come alive when they’re performing or even just listening to music,” he said.

Looking ahead, Luciano noted that “the findings should encourage research into the evolutionary origins of music enjoyment and the brain pathways that map onto the positive emotions that music can evoke.”