The brain activity of dogs that were expecting one toy but were shown another suggests canines create mental concepts of everyday objects.
“Anyone who has ever interacted very much with a dog probably is not that surprised to know that dogs understand that your speech is referring to at least a few common objects,” says Ellen Lau, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland in College Park. But some people may have assumed this sort of “understanding” is just a simple, almost reflexive reaction to the sound of the word. “It’s always great to have evidence like this coming out to make the argument against that,” Lau says.
The researchers recruited 27 pet dogs . This motley collection included a toy poodle, an Akita, a Labrador and some mixed breeds . Boros and her colleagues asked the owners to bring five familiar toys to the lab. Once there, the team stuck electrodes to the pooches’ heads and asked the pups to do just two things: lie on a comfy mat and stay awake.
In an experiment, this dog heard a recording of its owner’s voice saying the word for a toy. Then, the dog saw the owner appear in a window holding up a toy. Electrodes on the dog’s head picked up stronger brain signals when an unexpected toy was presented instead of the one named by the owner.The electrodes monitored brain activity while the dogs listened and watched the window.
Humans have this surprise signal, too. It’s called the N400 effect, and it occurs in the brain just after something unexpected happens. “There have been now thousands of human studies investigating and using this N400 effect,” Lau says. But there has been no evidence of a similar signal in dogs, until now.
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