MRI study shows noise reaction activity in the same part of the brain
Canine brains have been found to react in the same way as human brains to voices and emotional sounds, such as crying or laughing.
Researchers in Hungary, used MRI scanners to see how dog and human brains reacted to noises and found similarities in brain activity in the temporal pole.
Lead author Dr Attila Andics said: "During the approximately 18–32 thousand years of domestication, dogs and humans have shared a similar social environment.
"Dog and human vocalisations are thus familiar and relevant to both species, although they belong to evolutionarily distant taxa, as their lineages split approximately 90–100 million years ago.
"In this first comparative neuro-imaging study of a non-primate and a primate species, we made use of this special combination of shared environment and evolutionary distance.
"We presented dogs and humans with the same set of vocal and nonvocal stimuli to search for functionally analogous voice-sensitive cortical regions.
"We demonstrate that voice areas exist in dogs and that they show a similar pattern to anterior temporal voice areas in humans.
"Our findings also reveal that sensitivity to vocal emotional valence cues engages similarly located non-primary auditory regions in dogs and humans.
"Although parallel evolution cannot be excluded, our findings suggest that voice areas may have a more ancient evolutionary origin than previously known."
The study has been published in full in Current Biology
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