WASHINGTON -

In a study that may explain why some people have powerful emotional response to music, researcher's have found that melodies can stimulate the same parts of the brain as food and sex.

"People now are using music to help them deal with sadness and fear," said Dr. Anne Blood, a researcher at Mass. General Hospital in Charlestown, MA. "We are showing in our study that music is triggering systems in the brain that make them feel happy."

Blood and her co-author, Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal, used positron emission tomography, or PET scans, to find areas of the brain that are stimulated by music found so moving by the test subjects that it "sent shivers down the spine".

The researchers found that many of the brain structures activated by the euphoria of food or sex are also turned on by music. A report on the study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"In the reward and emotion systems of the brain, there are certain structures that are active," Blood said, clearly shows a similar response in these areas to musical sounds that the test subjects had preselected as beautiful enough to give them "chills". There was no response, however, to other types of sound.

Dr. Ira Glick, professor of psychiatry at Stamford University School of Medicine, said music "is one way to cope" in periods of stress, and it is known that "behind every emotion and every piece of behavior there is a change in a molecule.

"With this new technology, the PET, for the first time we can see it," he said. "It is exciting to see the biology unfold before our eyes as we explore the human mind."

In the study, Blood and Zatorre asked 10 musicians, five men and five women, to pick out music whose beauty caused them to have "chills". The subjects were then given PET scans as they listened.