Using the brain activity images, researchers found the dogs processed the human words regardless of intonation, and they did so using the left side of the brain, just like humans. This new study shows canines use the same part of their brains as humans do to process words, intonation and grammar. The scientist theorizes that other animals likely have some understanding of our language, too, but given dogs long social history with humans, they are the easiest to test.
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Main researcher Dr Attila Andics, of EötvösLorand University, Budapest, said at the time of speech processing, a well-known labor distribution takes place inside the human brain.
“From this research, we can quite confidently say if they only hear you then it is not only how you say things but also what you say that matters to them”, said Andics.
“Our findings suggest that dogs can also do all that, and they use very similar brain mechanisms”.
During the study a trainer spoke selected “praise” words to the dogs, including “clever”, “well done” and “that’s it”.
For those familiar with dogs, the results of this study will probably seem unsurprising. Brain scans revealed that, like humans, dogs processed words with the left side of their brains and used the right side to process pitch.
During the experiments, dog owners voiced different combinations of words and tones: praise words with approving intonation, praise words with neutral intonation, neutral words with praising intonation, and neutral words with neutral intonation.
Dogs’ ability to communicate with humans is old news.
According to the study it’s not likely that humans could have selected dogs for this function during their domestication.
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The dogs had been trained to remain still in the MRI, and were not restrained or sedated in any way during the scans. Tone, on the other hand, was analyzed in the auditory regions of the right hemisphere. Unsurprisingly, praise stimulated the dogs’ “rewards center” or the region of the brain that reacts to pleasure. The researchers also think these words were meaningless to the dogs.
