A new study from Current Biology has shown that dogs can detect emotions in human voices. According to the researchers, the area of the brain responsible for voice and sounds has probably evolved at the same time in both humans and dogs. The researchers think it was about 100 million years ago when humans and dogs shared common ancestors.
"Dogs and humans share a similar social environment," Attila Andics, of MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group in Hungary, said. "Our findings suggest that they also use similar brain mechanisms to process social information. This may support the successfulness of vocal communication between the two species."
For this study, Andics and his companions trained 11 dogs to sit still in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and listen to 200 different sounds that belonged to both humans and dogs. The sounds represented different emotions like anger, laughing or crying.
The researchers then analyzed the brain activity of both dogs and humans found out that both species experienced a greater activation of the brain’s primary auditory cortex when they heard happy sounds. This means that dogs could understand that someone felt happy just by hearing his voice. Though there were some differences in how humans and dogs perceived the emotions of others, the researchers believe that their study can help understand how dogs detect the emotions of their owners.
(Fox News)
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