The brains of dogs are not hardwired to spot human faces, according to a new study, but pet pooches have learnt to use sound and scent to recognise their owners.
While humans use faces as a visual communication, they do not have a special status in the dog brain, according to a team from Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary.
Using an MRI scanner, the team monitored brain activity in both humans and dogs as they watched two-second videos show human faces and backs of heads.
The results from the animals showed that no part of their brains responded specifically to faces, but in humans the visual cortex lights up when it sees a face.
Researchers note that the reason dogs pay attention to human faces is because they evolved to depend on their owners and developed techniques to recognise them.
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Researchers found that our furry friends’ brains are not hardwired to focus on human faces, but respond with more excitement when an animal of the same species is in view. Researchers say that while humans uses faces as a visual communication, they do not have a special status in the dog brain
Using an MRI scanner, the team monitored brain activity in both humans and dogs as they watched two-second videos show human faces and backs of heads
The study was conducted by a team of Hungary- and Mexico-based researchers, who worked to compare how dog and human brains process visual information.
Previous studies have shown that dogs can recognise their owners – they use a combination of smell, voice and a limited ability to tell the contour of the face.
Attila Andics, who led the study at Eotvos Lorand university in Budapest, told AFP the study suggests that faces may be crucial to primates, but not so for other mammals.
‘The two species differ in their visual communication and this is reflected in their brains,’ Andics explained.
She told MailOnline that humans don’t have a region of the brain for recognising keys, a phone or our car – but we can still recognise them. This is likely similar for dogs when they are looking for their owners.
Andics told CNBC that the dogs went through months of extensive training on how to not move while inside the functional MRI scanner.
However, she also said that the animals were not forced or restrained in anyway, adding that they could ‘leave the scanner any time if they want’.
The study was conducted by a team of Hungary- and Mexico-based researchers, who worked together to compare how dog and human brains process visual information
Attila Andics, who led the study, said that the dogs went through months of extensive training on how to not move while inside the MRI scanner. However, he also said that the animals were not forced or restrained in anyway. ‘They can leave the scanner any time if they want,’ Andics continued
The team recruited 30 humans and 20 dogs for the study, with the volunteers watching short videos of a dock and human face, and the backs of their heads.
This research, according to the scientists, ‘is the first directly comparative, noninvasive visual neuroimaging study of a non-primate and a primate species.’
After brain response data was collected from the human subjects and dogs the team found that both responded to videos depending on whether it was showing an individual from their own species.
‘Earlier, our research group already showed a similar correspondence between dog and human brains for voice processing,’ said Andics.
‘We now see that species-sensitivity is an important organizing principle in the mammalian brain for processing social stimuli, in both the auditory and the visual modality.’
Regarding differences, the study found no brain areas in dogs that encode whether the viewed image is a face or a back-of-the-head -whereas in humans this is a crucial distinction.
‘Our new brain imaging study does not suggest dogs would not be able to recognize their owners’ faces,’ Andics told MailOnline.
‘What it shows is that dogs, unlike humans, do not have specialized brain regions to process faces.’
While there may not be a dedicated region of the dog brain for human faces, that doesn’t mean their brain isn’t involved in recognising their owner.
”We recognize our own car or phone, while we most probably do not have a highly specialized brain region to process cars or phones,’ Andics told MailOnline.
‘This is probably similar with dogs, who learnt that humans and also human faces are important, and so they pay attention, learn about faces and with experience they get better.’
After brain response data was collected from the human subjects and dogs the team found that both responded to videos depending on whether it was showing an individual from their own species
Researchers also identified dog and human brain regions that showed a similar activity pattern in response to the videos.
Raúl Hernández-Pérez, the other first author of the study and coordinator of the data collection in Mexico, said: ‘This so-called representational similarity analysis can directly compare brain activity patterns across species.
‘Interestingly, similarities between dog and human activity patterns were stronger for what we named functional matching (comparing activity for dog face in the dog brain to activity for human face in the human brain), than for physical matching (comparing activity for dog face in the dog brain to activity for dog face in the human brain).’
‘This shows that here we may have tapped into high-level categorical processing of social information rather than low-level visual processing, in dogs as well as in humans.’