Dogs React To Praise The Same Way Humans Do!

I’m sure many dog parents wonder what goes through their dog’s mind, more so, when they receive a compliment. At best dog parents will get a little tail wagging in response to a high pitch, but is that it?

This very question tugged the minds of a team of scientists who really wanted an inside scoop on the occurrences in the brain of a dog. Not only that; they wanted to assess whether the brain activity in dogs is similar to the human hierarchical way of acoustic processing.

As stated by Attila Andics, a neuroscientist at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, Hungary; the question posed on the way our dogs’ process words is of great importance as they are speechless but remarkably respond correctly to the words we speak.

In their experiment, the Hungarian research team rounded up 12 dogs of various breeds; some golden retrievers, border collies, and a German shepherd. Laid under a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI) each dog listened to a dog trainer who spoke recognizable words of praise like; well done and clever, followed by unrecognizable and more neutral words like; if and yet. As she spoke the machine scanned the dogs’ brain activity.

A dogs’ brain, similar to that of a human, processes the intonation and meaning of a word separately—however, dogs use their right brain hemisphere to do so, whereas humans use their left hemisphere.

When the dogs listened to the same intonation, in either praise or neutral, many times the activity in the older part of their brain instantly reduced. This suggested that dogs process intonation in the ancient region of their brains. Again, when the dogs heard repetitions of the known words the brain activity in the newer part of their brain gradually decreased, in contrast to when they heard the unknown words. The gradual decrease suggests that newer brain regions play a role in processing the meaning of words.

Essentially, the study shows that as dog parents, what we say and the way we say it is equally important to our dogs. As we look back on our evolution, domesticated animals have progressed alongside us; dogs have since employed their antique ability in processing our emotions. How about that for man’s best friend!

Feature Image Source: Pixabay