![]() Moreover, when the dogs’ brain waves peaked in the 250- to 650-millisecond range, they fired differently depending on who they were listening to. That suggests, Bálint says, that the dogs weren’t simply noticing the voices sounded different. The dogs’ brains didn’t produce any meaningful signals in the first 250 milliseconds, the time period in which humans tend to process sound qualities like pitch or tone. ![]() Puppy sounds how to#That suggests to Bálint and her co-authors that the pups are trying to figure out who or what is making the sound-and how to respond. In human brains, signal differences in this time frame are associated with motivation and decision-making. (The researchers didn’t include any “negative” sounds so as not to startle the pups.)įor each of the noises, the dogs experienced a change in brain waves within the first 250 to 650 milliseconds. Each sound was classified as conveying either a “positive” or “neutral” emotion, based on the context they were made in, like the excited yelp of a dog playing with a ball. The human sounds included only nonlanguage vocalizations like baby babble, laughter, and coughing, whereas the dog sounds included sniffing, panting, and barking. The researchers then played audio clips of human and dog vocalizations. Unlike humans’ bony noggins, dog heads have lots of muscles that can obstruct a clear readout, Bálint says. The scientists attached electrodes to each dog’s head to record its brain response-not an easy task, it turns out. She and her colleagues recruited 17 family dogs, including several border collies, golden retrievers, and a German shepherd, that were previously taught to lie still for several minutes at a time. So in the new study, Anna Bálint, a canine neuroscientist at Eötvös Loránd University, turned to an electroencephalogram, which can measure individual brain waves. But those images can’t reveal exactly when neurons in the brain are firing, and whether they fire differently in response to different noises. MRI has shown certain regions of the dog brain are more active when a pup hears another dog whine or bark. ![]() ![]() When played an audio clip of a lady laughing, for example, they’ll often look at a photo of a smiling woman.īut how exactly the canine brain processes sounds isn’t clear. Previous research has found that dogs can match human voices with expressions. “The fact that dogs use auditory information alone to distinguish between human and dog sound is significant,” says Jeffrey Katz, a cognitive neuroscientist at Auburn University who is not involved with the work. A new study backs up what I and my fellow dog owners have long suspected: Dogs’ brains process human and canine vocalizations differently, suggesting they evolved to recognize our voices from their own. When I speak, he looks at me with love when our canine neighbor makes his mind known, Leo barks back with disdain. My dog Leo clearly knows the difference between my voice and the barks of the beagle next door. ![]()
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