This is a scene that probably sounds familiar to many dog owners.
This is a scene that probably sounds familiar to many dog owners. We talk to our dogs not only to praise them, but to ask them to perform actions, to identify objects, and sometimes to scold them. And for the most part, they seem to possess some level of understanding. Dogs are motivated by praise, and find this type of social reinforcement equally or more rewarding than food. Your dog may be able to react to many commands, and they may know some of their favorite toys by name. But how dogs process human language was still unknown. To find out more, two research groups used a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI) to see which parts of dogs’ brains are active when we talk to them. They are looking for evidence that will tell us if dogs understand what words are, what words mean, and whether the areas of their brains that they use to process this information are similar to the areas we use. The first step toward asking these questions was training the dogs to lie still in the MRI scanner without restraint – something that even people struggle with. If you have ever had an MRI you can see why. The process is loud, claustrophobic, and long – and while the scanner is analyzing the brain even slight movement can ruin the data. The dogs in these studies learn to tolerate all of these challenges one by one, until they are ready for the real thing. Even this first step is a big breakthrough – most MRI studies in animals require that they are sedated or restrained, which adds a level of stress that can make interpreting data from these studies difficult.
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