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Dogs are usually not relaxed in a lab environment, |
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but with a little petting and lots of treats they can be trained to sit still even in an MRI scanner. |
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That’s how researchers in Hungary’s ELTE University were able to get images of their brains at work. |
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Research fellow says it helped them better understand the dogs’ relationship with humans. |
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“We have known for a long time that dogs and humans share similar social environment, |
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but now our results show that dogs and humans also have similar brain mechanisms to process social information," |
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After training 11 dogs to stay motionless while their brains were scanned, |
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the researchers checked their neurological responses to about 200 emotionally relevant sounds, |
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from whining and crying to playful barking and laughing. |
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They then compared the responses from human subjects. |
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They found striking similarities. |
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Andics says it opens new possibilities for research. |
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“It establishes a foundation of a new branch of comparative neuroscience, |
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because until now it was not possible to measure the brain activities of a non-primate |
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and the primate brain in a single experiment," |
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The canine mind is also being studied at Duke University, in North Carolina. |
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Co-Director of the school's Canine Cognition Center, Evan MacLean, |
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says that the Hungarian results are an important step forward. |
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“We’ve known for a long time that dogs have a lot of behavioral similarities compared to humans. |
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But we don’t know anything or very little at least about |
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whether some of these behaviors are represented similarly inside the brain of the dog, |
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so this research is providing a first glimpses to whether these behavioral similarities are underlined by similar neural processes," |
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And what that tells ordinary dog owners, the Hungarian scientists say, |
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is to treat your canine companions as friends, not mere animals, |
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because they evidently understand human feelings. |
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