We all know that dogs can learn to respond to human words, but it’s not always clear what happens in a dog’s brain when they hear and recognize words like “cookie” and ” fetch. ” Do they have to rely on other advertisements, such as gestures, to find out what we mean by that word? Do they paint a picture of a dog cookie when you say “biscuit,” or just the feeling of eating? In a new study, scientists from Emory University and New Florida College tried to get to the bottom of this question by training dogs to associate certain things with words like “blue” and “duck,” then used fMRI brain scanners to see what was happening in the dogs’ heads when they heard that word.
The study, published in Boundaries in Ignorance, studied the brains of 12 different dogs of different breeds (see below) who were trained to connect two different objects to random words such as “duck,” “blue,” and “Beach ball.” Both of these, which were different for each dog, were either taken by the owners of the dogs from home or selected from a selection of dog toys compiled by the researchers. One had to be soft, like a stuffed animal, and the other had to be something hard, like a rubber toy or a squeaky toy, to make sure the dogs could clearly distinguish between the two . The dogs were trained for several months to attach these materials to their specific words and to get them on order.
They then entered the fMRI machine, where they were trained to sit quietly during scanning. The researchers’ dogs were lying in the machine while their owners stood in front of them, saying the named name for the toys and showing them the materials. To see how the dogs dealt with unfamiliar words, they kept up new things, like a hat, and referred to them with gibberish words.
The results show that dogs can, of course, distinguish between familiar words and novel words. Although not all dogs showed the same neural response, they showed activity in different areas of their brains when they heard the familiar word against the novel one.
Some dogs showed evidence of a greater neural response in the parietotemporal cortex, an area of the dog brain believed to be similar to the human angular gyrus, an area of the brain that allows us to hear and read the words process us. Others showed increased neural activity in other areas of the brain. These differences may be due to the fact that the study used dogs of different sizes and breeds, which may mean differences in abilities.
The dogs showed a remarkable shift in the brain’s response to new words. “We expected dogs to see a distinction between familiar and unfamiliar words,” lead author Ashley Prichard of Emory University said in a news release. “What’s surprising is that the results are opposite to the results of a human study – people tend to show more cloud activity for familiar words than novel words. “This could be because the dogs were trying very hard at what their owners were saying.
The results do not prove that talking to your dog is the best way to get attention, however – it just means that they will know what is coming when you say, “Ag want a cookie? “