If you are a dog lover, you probably knew this much before scientists stepped in to spend weeks studying it.
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Researchers in Hungary trained dogs to sit very still in a functional MRI scanner.
Previous studies have found that dogs can understand language, matching objects to words, for example, but this is the first time researchers have examined how language is processed in the brains of dogs, The Washington Post reported.
“This is very similar to what human brains do”. And they process that information just like humans do, in the left hemisphere of their brains for vocabulary and the right hemisphere of the brain for intonation. The team also noticed that the reward center, a part of the brain associated with pleasure, only activated when the dogs heard praise words in a positive, praising tone. Meanwhile, the scanner was picking up the dogs’ brain activity to see how they processed what they were hearing. He says, “To find that dogs have a very similar neural mechanism to tell apart meaningful words from meaningless sound sequences is, I think, really incredible”.
It had already been established that dogs respond to human voices better than their wolf brethren, are able to match hundreds of objects to words, and can be directed by human speech.
“I have two huskies at home [and] they absolutely understand”, Bolles said.
Andics said the findings suggest that the mental ability to process language evolved earlier than previously believed and that what sets humans apart from other species is the invention of words. When you say pooches anything, they don’t just listen to the words, but also pay attention to the tone you use. Four different recordings were played with either praise words (such as “well done!”) or neutral words (such as “however” or “nevertheless”) coupled with either a high-pitched intonation indicative of praise, or a neutral intonation.
“We praise them, call them”, said Attila Andics of Eötvös Loránd University, lead author of the study.
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His research, which was published in the journal Science, reveals dogs (like people) use the left hemisphere of their brain to process word meaning and the right side to analyze intonation.
