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Your genes may influence how much you enjoy listening to music

Identical twins seem to experience more similar levels of pleasure when listening to music than non-identical twins, which suggests it has a genetic element

By Roberta Angheleanu

19 April 2024

Some people get more pleasure from music than others

Dejan Dundjerski/Shutterstock

How much we enjoy music may partly come down to our genetic make-up, according to a study of thousands of identical and non-identical twins.

The pleasure people get from a tune has been linked to its effects on our . The degree of enjoyment can differ a lot from person to person, but little is known about why this is so.

To investigate the role of genetics, at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands…

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