Dogs understand what you say and how you say it … – Daily Page Seven

ABC.es / Madrid

“Nice, handsome, cute, well …” usual blandishments that can be regales your dog to show her how much you love him . And he probably understands it immediately, but it turns out that the animal not only understands the meaning of your words, but also the intonation with which you have spoken. That is, it is not the same as a “beautiful” said with affection and joy, promise of caresses, pampering, food or some other reward, said the same expression as the speaker of time. And your pet is able to distinguish it.

According to a new study published this week in the journal Science, the brain of our best animal friends processes both what we say and how we say it. Like people, dogs use the left brain to process words and a right-brain region for intonation. In addition, the praises activate the reward center of the dog only when words and intonation match.

The results of a group of Hungarian research suggest that the neural mechanisms for processing word evolved much earlier than is I thought, and are not unique to the human brain. Thus, they suggest that if an environment is rich in speech, as in the case of domestic dogs, representations of the meaning of words can arise in the brain, even in a non-primate mammal that is not able to speak.

“During speech processing, there is a distribution job well known in the human brain. the work of the left hemisphere is mainly process the meaning of the word, while the right hemisphere is processed intonation . the human brain not only analyzed separately what we say and how we say it, but also integrates the two types of information to reach a unified meaning, “says Attila Andics, Department of Ethology of the Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest. “Our findings suggest that dogs can also do all that, and use very similar brain mechanisms.”

the researchers trained thirteen dogs to lie completely still on a scanner fMRI brain. This technique “provides a noninvasive and safe measurement dogs enjoy way,” says Marta Gácsi, ethologist and one of the study authors.

Then the team measured the brain activity of the dogs listen to the speech of his coach. “the dogs heard words of praise in a tone of praise, words of praise in a neutral intonation and neutral words with no meaning for them, both in intonation of praise as neutral. Then look for brain regions that differentiate between meaningful words and nonsense, or between intonations of praise and neutral “describes Anna Gábor, also a member of the study.

The images of brain activation showed that dogs they prefer to use their left brain to process meaningful words. This bias to the left was also present at weak and strong levels of brain activations, and was independent of intonation. Dogs activate an area of ​​the right brain to distinguish between intonations to praise and rest. This was the same auditory region of the brain that this group of researchers previously found in dogs for emotional processing of sounds that are not speech of dogs and humans, suggesting that processing mechanisms intonation are not specific for speech.

Andics and colleagues also found that the active praise the reward center of the dogs, the brain region that responds to all types of pleasurable stimuli, such as food, sex, mimes, or even pleasant music in humans. But the reward center was activated only when the dogs heard the words of praise with proper intonation. “This shows that for dogs, a good compliment can work very well as a reward, but it works better if words and intonation agree. So the dogs not only differentiate what we say and how we say it, but they can also combine two things for a correct interpretation of what those words really mean. again, this is very similar to what the human brain, “sums Andics.

researchers say this study is the first step in understanding how dogs interpret human language, and these results can also help make communication and cooperation between dogs and humans is even more efficient. the results also shed light on the appearance of words during evolution language. “the only unique ability of researchers is to invent new words,” says Andics.