A dog is a man's best friend. For me there isn’t a truer
statement in the world. My two dogs are my favorite part of coming home, waking up every day and everything else. Dogs
can be relaxing, they can bring happiness, and they can be downright great
companions.
A group of researchers wanted to study the relationship
between mothers and their children versus the relationship between humans and
their pets. They took a group of mothers that had a child between the ages of 2
and 10 and also had a pet dog in the house for at least two years. There were a
total of two sessions. In the first session, the researchers collected data
from the mothers at their houses through surveys and questionnaires. During this first session at the home, the
researchers also took a picture of both the dog and the child. In the second
session, the mothers were brought to a medical center where they underwent an
fMRI. In the fMRI they were shown images of their children and their pets in
rotation along with pictures of random children and dogs. The fMRI allowed the
researchers to study activation of different parts of the brain.
Out of 16 mothers, 14 of the mother’s data were viable.
Areas of the brain that are known to be important in emotion, social
interaction, reward and visual processing all reacted with increased activation
when the mothers were shown pictures of their own children and dogs as
expected. The substantia nigra is important in bond formation and was activated
with the pictures of the mother’s own child. The fusiform gyrus, important in
facial recognition, was activated more in the mother’s own dog’s picture rather
than their own child.
I found the most surprising part of the study was that the
part of the brain responsible for facial recognition (the fusiform gyrus) was
activated more by the owner’s dog than the mother’s child. The researchers
hypothesized that the reason for this was that humans rely more on visual cues
from dogs and rely more on verbal cues from their children when trying to
recognize them.
The study was so small that the experiment needs to be repeated on a larger scale to have a significant finding or impact.
Source:
The study was so small that the experiment needs to be repeated on a larger scale to have a significant finding or impact.
Source:
http://neurosciencenews.com/neuroimaging-human-pet-relationship-fmri-1390/
As a dog lover, this article caught my attention. It's interesting that the mothers fusiform gyrus was activated more by the dog. Although, the hypothesization makes sense to me. Obviously, we can't talk with dogs and it may be more difficult to communicate with them than with a child. Children have many different ways of communicating with us through speech, and actions. Dogs do not speak our language, therefore it's difficult to entirely understand dogs. On the topic of verbal cues, I think that children and dogs can relate. I think that dogs know when their name is being called and they react in the same way that children do. Both are able to acknowledge the speaker and what direction the voice came from.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a cool study! As a dog lover too I can totally relate to feeling excited about going home so I can spend time with my dog. I like the techniques that the researchers used in this experiment. I never knew that the substantia nigra was associated with bond formation, but it does make sense that that area of the brain would activate when a mother is shown a picture of her child. I wonder if the same techniques could be used in a slightly different study like seeing if the substantia nigra would activate when a mother of an adopted child saw a picture of her adopted child. Does bond formation need a biological origin? Would another area of the brain activate? It's also interesting that the fusiform gyrus activated when mothers' saw their pictures of their pets. With the inability to detect language using our auditory senses when trying to recognize our dogs, it would make sense that we would be forced to rely on our visual senses. This study is really interesting and it would be really great to see it repeated on a larger scale or adapted in a way that addresses another research question.
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