Dogs are able to distinguish negative human emotions, including fear, sadness, and anger, at the level of neural brain patterns. This conclusion was reached for the first time by scientists from the University of Vienna, reports infohub.kz.
The researchers, led by Raul Hernandez-Perez and Laura Cuaya, studied the neural mechanisms of dogs' perception of human emotions. In the experiment, they performed functional MRI on awake pet dogs while the dogs looked at photographs of people with expressions of joy, anger, fear, and sadness.
The results of the study, published in the journal iScience, showed that the canine brain responds to human smiles by activating the temporal cortex and the caudate nucleus, which is associated with the reward system. At the same time, whole-brain activity analysis for the first time revealed clearly distinct patterns of neural signals when viewing expressions of fear, anger, and sadness.
The authors of the work note that the ability to recognize subtle emotional facial cues developed in dogs during evolution and domestication. According to the scientists, these findings help to better understand the emotional sphere of animals and improve communication with them.