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For the first time, scientists have trained dogs to remain motionless in a brain scan to determine how the canine brain distinguishes old words from new ones.
When science begins to explore the connection that humans have with their dogs, the results will not fail to fascinate.
For example, a study Medical News Today reported last year revealed that dogs prefer to ignore the danger and look at the smiling faces of their owners instead. Oxytocin, "the hormone of love" that strengthens the attachment between humans and between them and their pets, acts as a mediator.
On a similar note, another studyftrtuazzxcavbraydwczwuxvtqxstewwsf found that talking to your dog in the same way as you would for your baby increases attachment and bonding.
But what's going on in your dog's brain when you talk to him? Can dogs distinguish the meaning of different words and can they tell the difference if you say, "Who is a good banana cake?" instead of, "who is a good boy?"
In an effort to elucidate some of these mysteries, neuroscientist Gregory S. Berns' scientists, from the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, decided to study word processing in the canine brain.
Ashley Prichard, doctoral candidate at Emory's Department of Psychology, is the first author of the article, which was published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
Study dogs inside a brain scan
Prichard explains the motivation of the study by stating, "Many dog owners think their dogs know what some words mean, but there is not really any scientific evidence to support of that. "
"We wanted to get data from the dogs themselves, not just owner reports," added the first author.
The lead author, Berns, continues, "We know that dogs have the ability to process at least some aspects of human language because they can learn to follow verbal orders."
"Previous research, however, suggests that dogs can rely on many other clues to follow a verbal command, such as the look, gestures and even the emotional expressions of their owners," says the researcher.
As part of the Dog Project, a neuroscience initiative founded by Berns, researchers have trained dogs, for the first time, to get in and stay motionless inside a resonance imaging scanner. Functional magnetic (fMRI), without restraint or sedation.
For this study, the researchers taught two different words to 12 different breed dogs and trained them to distinguish between the toys that the words meant.
At the end of the training period, which lasted for months, the dogs demonstrated that they could discern between the two objects by choosing and searching for the right object at the request of the owner.
Then, inside the fMRI scanner, the dogs heard both the words they had learned to recognize and new pseudowords. For example, the owner would say several times the words "piggy" or "monkey", then brandish the corresponding toys.
Then the owner would use pseudo-control words such as "bobbu" and "bodmick" and present new random objects, such as a hat or a doll.
How dogs treat new words
By comparing the neural response to known words and the reaction to new words, the results showed greater bilateral activation in the parietotemporal cortex of the brain in response to pseudo-words.
Prichard and his colleagues believe that the parietotemporal cortex could be the canine equivalent of the angular gyrus in humans, an area of the brain that deals with lexical differences.
However, the researchers also identified a "subset" of dogs for which the new pseudo-words activated other areas of the brain, such as left temporal cortex and amygdala, left caudate nucleus and the thalamus.
Scientists explain the meaning of the results. Prichard explains: "We expected dogs to make a neurological distinction between words they know and words they do not know."
"What is amazing is that the result is opposite to that of human research: people usually show greater neuronal activation for known words than for new words."
-The first author, Ashley Prichard
Researchers point out that dogs of different breeds may have different cognitive skills, which could be a limitation for the study. In addition, neural circuit mapping in dogs is usually difficult because of the varying size of the brain and the potential for intelligence, the authors added.
"Dogs can have different abilities and motivations to learn and understand human words," says Berns, "but they seem to have a neuronal representation of the meaning of the words they have been taught, beyond an answer." Pavlovian low level ".
Do you have to use words to train a dog?
However, the researchers point out that the results do not necessarily imply that spoken words are the best way to communicate with a dog.
In fact, another study by Prichard and Berns earlier this year suggests that dog brain circuits responsible for treating reward and facilitating learning are more related to visual and olfactory information than to verbal cues. .
Therefore, "verbal commands may be the least effective way to train dogs," concluded the previous study.
"When people want to teach their dog a ride, they often use a verbal command because that's what we, humans, prefer," says Prichard.
"From a dog's point of view, however, a visual control could be more effective, helping the dog learn the ride faster."
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