Source : Perth Now news
Man’s best friend really may know how you feel, with scientists finding that dogs can distinguish between different emotions shown on human faces.
Researchers at the University of Vienna used brain scans and machine learning to study 12 border collies as they looked at photographs of strangers displaying happy, angry, fearful and sad expressions.
They found areas of the dogs’ brains linked to higher cognitive functions and reward processing, including the temporal cortex and caudate nucleus, became active when the animals viewed happy faces.
But those areas did not respond in the same way to angry, fearful or sad expressions.
When the researchers examined activity across the whole brain, they also found distinct patterns that allowed the dogs to differentiate fear from anger and sadness.
The team said: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence that dogs can distinguish between two human faces showing negative expressions.
“This suggests that the dog brain separates human facial expressions by valence, and shows separability among some negative human facial contrasts, particularly those involving fear.”
Senior author Laura Cuaya said dogs “have evolved with us to understand our expressions and cooperate with us, and recognising that can change how we communicate with and care for them”.
The findings suggest dogs may be doing considerably more than simply reacting to the tone of a human voice or a familiar command.
Researchers now plan to investigate how dogs combine facial expressions with other clues, including body language, subtle changes in voices and scent, when working out what humans are feeling.
The study, published in iScience, does have some limitations.
Only 12 dogs took part, all were border collies and they were shown static photographs rather than moving faces.
The researchers also noted that border collies are particularly skilled at following social cues, meaning other breeds may respond differently.
All the dogs came from loving homes, so the team warned that animals raised in different environments could interpret human emotional signals in other ways.
Still, the researchers say the results offer fresh evidence that dogs have a sophisticated ability to read the humans they have lived alongside for thousands of years.
