It is proved that dogs can distinguish between our emotions
A Life / / December 19, 2019
Who has not wondered what they think four-legged friend when looking at us? Scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico decided to get to the truth. A team of researchers found out whether dogs can distinguish human emotions.
university staff published a studyDecoding Human Emotional Faces in the Dog's BrainIn which they examined the brain activity of four Border Collies with technology of functional magnetic resonance therapy (fMRI). During the scan, the dogs showed the face of strangers with different emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear.
Then, the scientists analyzed the brain patterns of dogs with the help of neural networks and found out what the seen emotions they correspond.
More than the others stood pattern recorded at the time when the dog is looking at a happy face. At this point, the Border Collie has been increased activity in the temporal cortex, which is responsible for the processing of complex visual information.
The data obtained in this experiment, similar to the results of research
Describing Semantic Representations of Brain Activity Evoked by Visual Stimuli the human brain, which was carried out Japanese scientists in the early 2018. In it they also used fMRI technology, and the neural network described what he saw the man. And did it quite accurately: AI can determine when a person is looking at the dog, which was lying near the door, and when - a group of people near the sea.Despite the fact that Mexican researchers limited to a few emotions, the results have shown that dogs are able to understand us. Although dog owners is obvious: my dog knew when I was sad, and when I was happy. In this case, he reacted with remarkable accuracy: I might come and lie next to me, or, on the contrary, be playful and joyful.
It remains to invent a portable device that will scan the dog's brain on the go. You can do something like a portable scanner of the human brain, like a Spartan helmet. This would help owners better understand how their pet perceives the world.
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