Specific musical anhedonia

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I wonder if anyone here has specific musical anhedonia, where you can't get pleasure from listening to music, even though you can do pitch discrimination and memorize songs (i.e. you're not tone deaf):

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shot ... them-happy

You can take a test on it, where for each item the score is between 0 and 100, with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10 (meaning the "normal" range is 40-60):

http://brainvitge.org/z_oldsite/bmrq.php

As for me, my scores were:

Music Seeking: 45
Emotion Evocation: 60
Mood Regulation: 63
Sensori-motor: 41
Social: 18
Music Reward: 46

Music is my favorite of the fine arts. For me, music is NOT a social thing; I generally enjoy music the most when I'm alone. Sensori-motor may be a bit low, because I generally do not dance: instead, I do movements that are unstructured and incoherent in response to music that really gets me going. That, as a teenager, my movements were seen as a "problem" by my father may have contributed to making music an alone time thing for me.

Also, there are very few pieces of music I realy really like, but that doesn't detract from those pieces that I really really like.

I like many different kinds of music very much--never above about 60 decibels, though.

If I'm out in the country, I like listening to classical music when I drive in the mountains. However, when I'm hiking, I would really rather not listen to music.

I got these scores:
MUSIC SEEKING:51
EMOTION EVOCATION:52
MOOD REGULATION:39
SENSORI-MOTOR:38
SOCIAL:55
MUSIC REWARD: 45

Average score = 46.6 So according to that I'm normal but slightly below average in music hedonia.

Strange, that. I've just got back from a jam session. I'm a keen musician and I love music as long as it's good stuff (whatever that means). I suspect this test didn't work very well on me.

Why do they have 3 virtually identical questions?
9. Music calms and relaxes me
14. Music helps me chill out
19. Music comforts me
There's far less in the quiz about music raising the spirits or serving as a good "weepie." Is the calming effect of music so important that they ask about it 3 times?

Also, I felt I might have been skewing the test by avoiding answering with a 1 or a 5, because of my aversion to making extreme statements.

Music seeking: I felt the question "I spend quite a lot of money on music" was dodgy because many poor people get tons of music without paying for it, though I scraped through because I buy musical instruments.

I'm not sure what the difference is between emotion evocation and mood regulation. I just feel that the great thing about music is that it serves as a good emotion pump.

I guess I flunked on "sensori-motor because I'm a poor dancer and because I CAN avoid singing along, and usually do when I'm among people who might not like it. It's a strong pull for me to sing or tap my feet, but I'm in control.

The social aspect is strong in me, so why didn't I get over 50%? Could be that I shun the "hive-mind" thing at music concerts but love to play music with others even though it challenges my Aspieness.

I don't know what "music reward" means. Maybe I should read the article - I cut to the chase and just did the test.

Good thread. I like threads about the psychology of music.

I was just thinking about this today. I used to get great pleasure from music, but I don't anymore.

MUSIC SEEKING:
-6

EMOTION EVOCATION:
0

MOOD REGULATION:
1

SENSORI-MOTOR:
5

SOCIAL:
17

MUSIC REWARD: -18

I scored really low I honestly believe I have music specific anhedonia and I believed this since before I did the test... anhedonia though by definition is a sudden lack of enjoyment of a thing and while I've been told I used to enjoy music I don't really remember ever enjoying music... and I tend to find radio static more soothing than music...

My scores:

Seeking-55
Emotion Evocation: 54
Mood: 50
Sensory Motor: 49
Social: 67
Reward: 56

Above the mid-range for everything except sensory motor. I think that is accurate. Now I believe listening to music has become more of a social and bonding experience. When I was younger, I usually listened to music alone or with my family. I have always had music around me and loved it.

One piece of music that always makes me cry is "Memory" from Cats. I guess it makes me think of my own cats, many of which lived to be quite old.

I just wanted to correct this. I do get great pleasure from certain music now. My extreme anhedonia was an effect of traumatic damage done to me by psychopaths, which included them drugging me and overdosing me, causing other damage as well. I have healed a lot and am still healing, and I love music.