Individuals with substance use disorders experience an increased urge to move to complex music

Substance use disorders disrupt the dopaminergic system of the human brain, which playsa central role in movement and reward processing, altering perception, and cognition.The pleasurable urge to move to music, known as groove, relies on dopamine for reward,anticipation, beat perception, and motor system activity. Using a well-established paradigm,which shows an inverted-U relationship between groove and musical complexity, we inves-tigated how dopamine downregulation from long-term cocaine and heroin use affects theexperience of music. Drug users experienced stronger groove with high rhythmic and har-monic complexities than nonusers, while moderate complexities elicited similar responsesacross groups. This pattern differs from other populations with altered dopaminergic func-tion, such as Parkinson’s disease or musical anhedonia, highlighting a distinct effect of drugaddiction on music perception. The findings suggest that drug users seek more intense andcomplex stimulation, supporting the hypothesis that a hypodopaminergic state associatedwith drug use raises the threshold for nondrug stimuli to engage the reward system