Written by: PetMD Editorial. Published: May 06, Help us make PetMD better Was this article helpful? Yes No. Share this article. What did you find helpful? What was not helpful? Say more Sign me up for the PetMD Newsletter. Submit Feedback. But by setting up an experiment in which owners were misinformed about whether their dogs had eaten a forbidden treat, Horowitz discovered that those so-called guilty looks might mean something else.
Even dogs that had obeyed a command displayed the guilty look if they were reprimanded by their owners. Empathy is another complex emotion, and there is some evidence that dogs can feel it.
Humans, chimpanzees and baboons all pass yawns to members of their own species, and according to one study, dogs can catch yawns from humans —but not all humans. The tested dogs tended to yawn after their owners did, but were immune to the yawns of strangers, suggesting they had stronger emotional connections to the people they cared about most. Other research has hinted that dogs can read human emotions.
For example, when dogs looked at photos of either the top or bottom halves of human faces, they had aversive responses to the angry-looking mouths and eyes but not to the happy ones. A recent study suggests they are also skilled at discerning the emotions of other dogs ; they can match playful-sounding barks to photos of play faces, and aggressive barks to scowling faces, with great accuracy. Brain images of dogs looking at either food or their owners praising them revealed that both food and praise equally triggered the caudate nucleus—a brain area linked to reward in humans—in most dogs.
Chemicals in the brain help to reinforce that human-canine bond. Last year, Udell and her colleagues discovered that dogs have some of the same genetic characteristics as people with Williams-Beuren syndrome , a disorder marked by unusually extroverted personalities, lack of fear of strangers, and difficulty solving independent problems.
But the scientific inquiry into the canine psyche has yielded some interesting findings, and in its own way, brought us closer together. They obviously have a sense of time, and the reason I say that is because all animals have some kind of sense of time and they can do it in a variety of ways.
They have internal rhythms, circadian rhythms, that govern the 24 hour cycle. You can gauge time by how hungry you are, by whether your bladder is filling up, by the change in lighting outside. These are all cues that dogs pick up on. Gregory Berns: There have been a couple of groups who have studied this. I have two little female Toy Fox Terriers, raised the exact same way.
Are their personalities an aspect of their thoughts? The one that probably makes the most difference is how aggressive the dog is—are they aggressive to other dogs or are they aggressive to other people? So there are definitely differences. However, when they bite, dogs can cause serious injury, especially to children. Interestingly, dogs with behavioral problems often improve when they are treated with human medications for depression and anxiety. Serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, like fluoxetine Prozac , are some of the most commonly prescribed drugs in veterinary behavioral medicine.
Others include benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, beta-blockers, and even lithium. Indeed, the psychopharmacopeia for dogs is nearly the same as for humans. The fact that these medications work in dogs speaks to common biological mechanisms of mood regulation. And unlike humans, dogs are not susceptible to placebo effects although their owners might be, by expecting improved behavior.
Notwithstanding their emotional quirks, dogs are used in a variety of capacities to help people with disabilities.
Service dogs are trained for specific tasks that a person cannot do by themselves, which might include picking up items, opening doors, and alerting to sounds. A psychiatric service dog might be trained to detect the onset of psychiatric episodes, or to turn on lights for someone with post-traumatic stress disorder.
In contrast, emotional support dogs are not trained for specific tasks, but used for companionship, to alleviate loneliness, and to aid in the treatment of depression and anxiety. While service dogs are afforded certain protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act, emotional support animals are not although they may be covered by other laws, like the Fair Housing Act and Air Carrier Access Act.
Most dogs are not cut out for this kind of work, so there is a need to identify those that are and not waste resources training those who will not be good service dogs. Brain imaging may play a role here. In a study of 50 dogs-in-training , we were able to predict with 91 percent accuracy whether a dog would or would not graduate service dog training.
In particular, we found that amygdala activation was negatively correlated with success, suggesting that dogs that are prone to arousal—either because they are anxious or simply want to play—are not good candidates for service dogs. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that dogs are not simply treatments to be prescribed for various conditions. Like people, dogs have a wide variety of skills and personalities. And while there are some differences between breeds in any particular personality trait, there seems to be as much variability within a breed.
The key to a strong dog-human bond is in the match between dog and human, but this may be as hard to predict as the match between two people. Future research, both with brain imaging and other physiological measures, may soon shed light on the canine side of the equation. Financial disclosure. This article first appeared in the Spring issue of our Cerebrum magazine. Click the cover for the full e-magazine. Are those who perform before the public—hundreds, thousands, even millions of spectators at a time—at heightened risk of mental illness?
The Brain Prize went to four individuals whose independent research led to useful treatments for a disorder affecting a billion people.
A sampling of work by Dana Simmons, Ph. A psychiatrist falls seriously ill, and considers anew the dogma not to share details of one's life with one's patients.
Our authors, who study successful aging and mental illnesses at the University of California, San Diego, address the much-debated, complicated question that many of us have long wondered about: Does the brain improve with age? Sign up for monthly email updates on neuroscience discoveries, Cerebrum magazine, and upcoming events. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. Back to Parent Page. Home Cerebrum Decoding the Canine Mind. Share This Page. Callie in the MRI scanner while watching pictures of faces.
Dogs are Special When scientists use animals in research, they often turn to species that are closely related to humans. Dog brain left and human brain right. Images are not to scale as the dog brain is approximately one-tenth the weight of the human brain.
Dog brain image courtesy of Thomas Fletcher, University of Minnesota.
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