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[00:00.80]Dogs are usually not relaxed in a lab environment,
[00:03.84]but with a little petting and lots of treats they can be trained to sit still even in an MRI scanner.
[00:09.97]That’s how researchers in Hungary’s ELTE University were able to get images of their brains at work.
[00:16.01]Research fellow says it helped them better understand the dogs’ relationship with humans.
[00:21.38]“We have known for a long time that dogs and humans share similar social environment,
[00:27.48]but now our results show that dogs and humans also have similar brain mechanisms to process social information,"
[00:37.25]After training 11 dogs to stay motionless while their brains were scanned,
[00:41.53]the researchers checked their neurological responses to about 200 emotionally relevant sounds,
[00:46.93]from whining and crying to playful barking and laughing.
[00:49.90]They then compared the responses from human subjects.
[00:52.53]They found striking similarities.
[00:54.35]Andics says it opens new possibilities for research.
[00:57.44]“It establishes a foundation of a new branch of comparative neuroscience,
[01:01.58]because until now it was not possible to measure the brain activities of a non-primate
[01:07.23]and the primate brain in a single experiment,"
[01:10.55]The canine mind is also being studied at Duke University, in North Carolina.
[01:15.03]Co-Director of the school's Canine Cognition Center, Evan MacLean,
[01:19.09]says that the Hungarian results are an important step forward.
[01:24.93]“We’ve known for a long time that dogs have a lot of behavioral similarities compared to humans.
[01:29.84]But we don’t know anything or very little at least about
[01:32.54]whether some of these behaviors are represented similarly inside the brain of the dog,
[01:39.57]so this research is providing a first glimpses to whether these behavioral similarities are underlined by similar neural processes,"
[01:46.04]And what that tells ordinary dog owners, the Hungarian scientists say,
[01:49.73]is to treat your canine companions as friends, not mere animals,
[01:53.97]because they evidently understand human feelings.
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