Here is a report that syas "Music causes the release of dopamine in the brain".
From a quick glance at the paper, it seems like dopamine production is from brain areas other than substantia nigra.

So folks, listen to your favorite music while playing brain games....
Joking aside, this thread is very informative and we can test this hypothesis fairly easily using John's protocol.
Any one interested in participating?
John, any thoughts on experimental design?

Thanks
Girija


A Review of the paper in Scientist
y Megan Scudellari
Musical pleasure
Drugs, sex, and food aren't the only sources of pleasure -- music activates the brain's reward circuitry as well

[Published 9th January 2011 06:00 PM GMT]

Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll have more in common that we thought. A new study, published online today (January 9) in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates for the first time that music causes the release of dopamine in the brain, just like other pleasurable stimuli, such as food, drugs, and sex.

Listening to intensely pleasurable music releases dopamine in the brain. Credit: Peter Finnie
Even the anticipation of a pleasurable musical crescendo results in the release of dopamine, the authors report. "This is what music theorists have been telling us for centuries," said Robert Zatorre, a neuropsychologist at McGill University in Quebec, Canada, and senior author on the study -- that a resolution of dissonance or the crescendo of a song emotionally affects the listener.

To assess the biological mechanism behind a pleasurable musical experience, the team conducted PET and fMRI brain scans while measuring the "chills" -- aka changes in temperature, skin conductance, heart rate and breathing -- that participants felt in response to their favorite songs, which ranged from classical to jazz to techno and even bagpipes. The researchers found that during peak emotional moments, when patients got the "chills," dopamine was released in two areas of the brain: First, in the caudate, an important part of the brain's learning and memory system, during anticipation of a musical peak, then during the peak experience, in the nucleus accumbens, a key site of reward and pleasure pathways.

The results may explain why music is so highly valued in society, said Zatorre, a trained organist who doesn't listen "to anything composed past 1750," he laughs. "Art in general has survived since the dawn of human existence, and is found in all human societies....................

Read more: Musical pleasure - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/news/di.../#ixzz1USNRW6D

Article from Nature

[B]Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music

Valorie N Salimpoor, Mitchel Benovoy, Kevin Larcher, Alain Daghe & Robert J Zatorre

Nature Neurosciences 14, 257–262 (2011)
doi:10.1038/nn.2726

Music, an abstract stimulus, can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving, similar to tangible rewards that involve the striatal dopaminergic system. Using the neurochemical specificity of [11C]raclopride positron emission tomography scanning, combined with psychophysiological measures of autonomic nervous system activity, we found endogenous dopamine release in the striatum at peak emotional arousal during music listening. To examine the time course of dopamine release, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging with the same stimuli and listeners, and found a functional dissociation: the caudate was more involved during the anticipation and the nucleus accumbens was more involved during the experience of peak emotional responses to music. These results indicate that intense pleasure in response to music can lead to dopamine release in the striatal system. Notably, the anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself. Our results help to explain why music is of such high value across all human societies.