Dogs’ brains tune in better when women talk to them, study finds

The dogs show greater brain sensitivity to speech directed at them than to speech directed at adults, especially if spoken by women, according to a new study in Communications Biology.

By conducting an fMRI study on trained dogs, Hungarian researchers from Eötvös Loránd University revealed interesting similarities between the brains of babies and dogs during the processing of speech with exaggerated prosody.

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When we communicate with recipients who have limited language proficiency (such as babies and dogs), in order to capture and hold their attention, we speak with a specific speech style characterized by exaggerated prosody. Baby-directed speech is very important as it supports healthy cognitive, social and language development of children. So it’s no surprise that babies’ brains are attuned to this style of speaking, but are dog’s brains also sensitive to the way we talk to them?

To answer this question, the researchers measured the dog’s brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In the MRI, trained and conscious family dogs listened to dog-directed speech, infants and adults recorded by 12 women and 12 men in real-life interactions.

“Studying how dog brains process dog-directed speech is exciting, because it may help us understand how exaggerated prosody contributes to efficient speech processing in a non-human species adept at relying on different speech cues (for example, following verbal commands)”explains Anna Gergely, co-first author of the study

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The study shows that the dogs’ auditory brain regions responded more to dog- and baby-directed speech than adult-directed speech, which it’s the first neural evidence that dogs’ brains are tuned to speech directed specifically at them.

Curiously, the dog brain’s speech sensitivity directed at dogs and babies was more pronounced when the speakers were female and was affected by the tone of the voice and its variation. These results suggest that the way we talk to our dogs does matter and that their brains are specifically sensitive to the exaggerated prosody typical of the female voice.

“What makes this result particularly interesting is that in dogs, unlike babies, this sensitivity cannot be explained either by ancient responsiveness to conspecific cues or by intrauterine exposure to women’s voices.” Surprisingly, the tone-of-voice patterns that characterize women’s dog-directed speech are “Not normally used in dog-to-dog communication; therefore, our results may serve as evidence of a neural preference that dogs developed during their domestication.”

“The increased sensitivity of the dog brain to dog-directed speech uttered specifically by women may be due to the fact that women speak to dogs more often than men with exaggerated prosody.”explains Anna Gábor, co-first author of the study.

Source: Elcomercio

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