Do you think your dog is able to understand? - The Universe

dog lovers often say that their pets understand them, a new study suggests they may be right. The work was published in the journal Current Biology.

After placing dogs

scanners, Hungarian researchers found that canine brain reacts to voices in the same way as the human brain.

Even

loaded sounds of a high share of excitement, as laughter or crying, also generated similar responses, which may explain why dogs act in harmony with the emotions of humans.

research leader, Attila Andics, University of Budapest, said one of the study’s conclusions is that “dogs and humans have a similar mechanism to process emotional information.”

The study

Once

dogs took part in the study and took a long time to train. “We use positive reinforcement strategies, many praises” said Dr. Andics and added:

“There were 12 sessions of preparatory training after seven sessions in the scanner room, and finally the dogs were capable of lying without any movement until about eight minutes. Once they were trained seemed very happy. did not would have believed it if I had not seen. “

For comparison, the scientists looked at the brains of 22 human volunteers in the same scanners.

researchers had both dogs and people hear about 200 different sounds, in a wide range ranging from sounds in the environment, as the noise of cars or whistles-up human sounds (not words) and canine vocalizations ” .

“We know there are areas where people respond more actively to sounds generated by people to other kinds of sounds,” said Andics.

“The location (of the activity) in the brain of dogs is very similar to what we find in the human brain. fact that we found that these areas exist in the brain of dogs is in itself a Surprise is the first time we see this in a non-primate species. “

loaded sounds great emotion, such as laughter or crying, also generated a similar type of brain activity in an area near the primary auditory cortex lit up in both dogs and humans.

Dog and human tuned

So did

canine sounds like whining or barking furiously, causing a similar reaction in all volunteers.

“We know very well that the dogs are very good in tune with the feelings of the owners, and we also know that a good dog owner can detect emotional changes in your pet, but now we begin to understand why,” said Andics.

However, although the dogs responded to the human voice, their reactions were much more active when they heard sounds canines.

animals also seemed less able to distinguish between sounds and environments vocal sounds compared to humans.

Nearly half of all dogs auditory cortex lit up as they heard these sounds, compared with 3% in the same area in the human brain.

Future research

“Find something in the brain of a primate is not very surprising, but very impressive show in dogs,” said Professor Sophie Scott, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of London.

“Dogs are very interesting to observe animals. We have selected many traits of dogs that have become so close to humans. Studies show that they understand many words and signs.”

But Scott said it would be very interesting to see the response of these animals not only words and sounds: “When we cry or laugh, these expressions are more like animals called and that’s what can cause this response,” <. / p>

“One step forward would be to check if a sensitivity to words in their own language they speak,” concluded the professor of the University of London.

says Dr. Andics beyond their next experiments will address.