Special Parts Of Doggy Brains Can Process Human Faces, Study

Dogs share a special bond with humans that can never be replaced. Scientists show that special parts of the dog's brain can be used to process faces, according to dailymail.

With an fMRI scanner, scientists gathered evidence that showed a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs. Dogs are hard-wired to recognise faces, which is why they may have become humans' best friends. They have developed through cognitive evolution, which is why dogs can pick up even the subtlest of social cues.

"'Our findings show that dogs have an innate way to process faces in their brains, a quality that has previously only been well-documented in humans and other primates," said Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University in the state of Georgia and the senior author of the study.

The Emory project trained dogs to enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner and remain static during scanning, without restraint or sedation. With an fMRI scanner, the team could identify how dogs responded to faces compared with other objects. One part of the brain linked with with positive emotions--- caudate nucleus--- is similar in dogs and humans, according to sciencenewsline.

He said: "If, as many scientists have argued in the past, it is all simply about [getting] food for dogs then the reaction in their brains would be the same no matter who or what is offering them the food," said Berns. "We hope to show that they love us for things far beyond food, basically the same things that humans love us for, like social comfort and social bonds."

Earlier, the approach helped to identify the caudate region of the canine brain as a reward centre, showing how this region of the dog's brain responds more strongly to the scents of familiar humans than to strangers or familiar dogs.

With an fMRI scanner, the team could identify how dogs respond to faces compared with everyday objects.

"Dogs are obviously highly social animals, so it makes sense that they would respond to faces. We wanted to know whether that response is learned or innate," Dr Berns said.

Canine participants in the new study were shown static and video images of faces on a screen while in the scanner.

They were trained to pay attention to the screen - a challenging task because dogs do not usually interact with 2D images.

Just six of the eight dogs enrolled in the study were able to hold their gaze for at least 30 seconds on each of the images to make the research possible,

But despite the small sample size, the researchers found a region in the dogs' temporal lobe responded significantly more to films of human faces than to movies of everyday objects.

This same region responded similarly to still images of human and dog faces, with canines paying less attention to objects than both the faces of humans and dogs.

The researchers have dubbed the canine face-processing region they identified the 'dog face area' or DFA.

Dr Berns explained that if the dogs' response to faces was learned - by associating a human face with food, for example - you would expect to see a response in the reward system of their brains, but that was not the case.

The find suggests that dogs are hard-wired to recognise faces and may explain why they have come to be man's best friend and read subtle human cues.

Daniel Dilks, an Emory assistant professor of psychology said after an earlier study: "That study identified only a few face-selective cells and not an entire region of the cortex."

There are at least three face-processing areas in the brain, including the fusiform face area, which can differentiate faces from other objects. Professor Dilks said: "We can predict what parts of your brain are going to be activated when you're looking at faces. This is incredibly reliable across people."

Identifying faces helps to distinguish social creatures. "Dogs have been cohabitating with humans for longer than any other animal," he said. "They are incredibly social, not just with other members of their pack, but across species. Understanding more about canine cognition and perception may tell us more about social cognition and perception in general."