Dog–human social relationship: representation of human face familiarity and emotions in the dog brain

Thompkins, Andie M; Lazarowski, Lucia; Ramaiahgari, Bhavitha; Gotoor, Sai Sheshan Roy; Waggoner, Paul; Denney, Thomas S.; Deshpande, Gopikrishna; Katz, Jeffrey S.

doi:10.1007/s10071-021-01475-7

Cited by 18 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Therefore, we first compared activation levels associated with the visual presentation of all stimuli compared to implicit baseline (i.e., white cross presented on grey background) using the localizer data set. This revealed taskresponsive activation within the occipital-, splenial-, ectomarginal-, caudal-, medial suprasylvian-and marginal gyri, partially overlapping with results from previous studies investigating face perception [29, [39][40][41][42]57,58] (Fig 1C, Table S1). We then used anatomical masks [51] of these regions as search spaces for the dog participants (Fig 2A).…”

Section: Functional Regions-of-interest (Frois)supporting

confidence: 88%

“…This interpretation is in line with a recent comparative eye-tracking study showing that dogs equally attend to a whole-body social cue (i.e., face and rest of the body), whereas humans spend significantly more time looking at the face 47 . Thus, our results do not contradict previous behavioural and imaging findings of dogs perceiving facial and bodily cues of dogs and humans 31,44,[67][68][69][70] but might suggest that the majority of brain regions involved in the perception of faces are also involved in the perception of body parts.…”

Section: Previous Behavioural Investigations Of How Dogs Perceive Bod...contrasting

confidence: 63%

“…Behavioural [7,34,35,44,70–73] and imaging studies [58,59] have also demonstrated that dogs are able to perceive facial and bodily cues of dogs and humans and display high responsiveness to ostensive-referential bodily cues [45,46,74,75], already as puppies [76]. Our results do not contradict these findings, but suggest that visual regions involved in the perception of faces are also involved in the perception of other body parts, and may thus encode animate stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe

Boch

Wagner

Karl

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Accurately recognizing other individuals is fundamental for successful social interactions. While the neural underpinnings of this skill have been studied extensively in humans, less is known about the evolutionary origins of the brain areas specialized for recognising faces or bodies. Studying dogs (Canis familiaris), a non-primate species with the ability to perceive faces and bodies similarly to humans, promises insights into how visuo-social perception has evolved in mammals. We investigated the neural correlates of face and body perception in dogs (N = 15) and humans (N = 40) using functional MRI. Combining uni- and multivariate analysis approaches, we identified activation levels and patterns that suggested potentially homologous occipito-temporal brain regions in both species responding to faces and bodies compared to inanimate objects. Crucially, only human brain regions showed activation differences between faces and bodies and partly responded more strongly to humans compared to dogs. Moreover, only dogs represented both faces and dog bodies in olfactory regions. Overall, our novel findings revealed a prominent role of the occipito-temporal cortex in the perception of animate entities in dogs and humans but suggest a divergent evolution of face and body perception. This may reflect differences in the perceptual systems these species rely on to recognize others.

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Section: Functional Regions-of-interest (Frois)supporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Previous Behavioural Investigations Of How Dogs Perceive Bod...contrasting

confidence: 63%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe

Boch

Wagner

Karl

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…Small transient responses and regions will not be detected, which might be problematic when looking into low activation perceptual mechanisms of emotion cues. Nonetheless, fMRI studies have successfully shown how the dog brain responds to the emotion content of the human voice (reviewed in Andics and Miklósi 2018 ) and face (Karl et al 2020 ; Thompkins et al 2018 , 2021 ). This technology has also shown that different regions of the dog cortex process dog vs. human facial expressions and that these regions (Thompkins et al 2018 , 2021 ), in dogs seem to be analogous to those found in humans, suggesting the existence of shared ancient neural networks for emotion cue perception (Haxby et al 2000 ; Thompkins et al 2021 ).…”

Section: What Methodologies Have Been Used To Assess the Perception O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual perception of emotion cues in dogs: a critical review of methodologies

2023

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Comparative studies of human–dog cognition have grown exponentially since the 2000’s, but the focus on how dogs look at us (as well as other dogs) as social partners is a more recent phenomenon despite its importance to human–dog interactions. Here, we briefly summarise the current state of research in visual perception of emotion cues in dogs and why this area is important; we then critically review its most commonly used methods, by discussing conceptual and methodological challenges and associated limitations in depth; finally, we suggest some possible solutions and recommend best practice for future research. Typically, most studies in this field have concentrated on facial emotional cues, with full body information rarely considered. There are many challenges in the way studies are conceptually designed (e.g., use of non-naturalistic stimuli) and the way researchers incorporate biases (e.g., anthropomorphism) into experimental designs, which may lead to problematic conclusions. However, technological and scientific advances offer the opportunity to gather much more valid, objective, and systematic data in this rapidly expanding field of study. Solving conceptual and methodological challenges in the field of emotion perception research in dogs will not only be beneficial in improving research in dog–human interactions, but also within the comparative psychology area, in which dogs are an important model species to study evolutionary processes.

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“…Canines or felines, being the most common animals accompanying humans, are highly social with each other and share a long evolutionary history with humans. A connectivitybased atlas with the parcellation pipeline in this study could provide the basis for investigating the mechanisms of co-evolution and social cognitions such as face recognition [85][86][87] .…”

Section: A Common and Cross-species Parcellation Pipeline For Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Macaque Brainnetome Atlas: A Multifaceted Brain Map with Parcellation, Connection, and Histology

Cui

Cao

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) is a crucial experimental animal that shares many genetic, brain organizational, and behavioral characteristics with humans. A macaque brain atlas that identifies anatomically and functionally distinct regions is fundamental to biomedical and evolutionary research. However, even though connectivity information is vital for understanding brain functions, a connectivity-based whole-brain atlas of the macaque has not previously been made. In this study, we created a new whole-brain map, the Macaque Brainnetome Atlas, based on the anatomical connectivity profile provided by high-resolution angular and spatial diffusion MRI data. The new atlas consists of 248 cortical and 56 subcortical regions as well as their structural and resting-state functional connections. We systematically evaluated the parcellations and connections using multi-site and multi-modal datasets to ensure reproducibility and reliability. The resulting resource, which is downloadable fromhttp://atlas.brainnetome.org, includes (1) the thoroughly delineated Macaque Brainnetome Atlas (MacBNA), (2) the multi-modal connections, (3) the largest postmortem high resolution macaque dMRI dataset, and (4) ex vivo MRI, block-face, and Nissl-stained images obtained from a different macaque. We provide an exemplar use of the resource with a joint multi-modal and multi-scale utilization of MRI and Nissl data with our atlas as a reference system. The goals of the resource are not only to provide a backbone of the mesoscopic connectivity and a multi-omics (such as transcriptomes and proteomes) atlas but also to facilitate translational medicine, cross-species comparisons, and computational modelling, enriching the collaborative resource platform of nonhuman primate data.

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Dog–human social relationship: representation of human face familiarity and emotions in the dog brain

Cited by 18 publications

References 41 publications

Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe

Functionally analogous body- and animacy-responsive areas in the dog (Canis familiaris) and human occipito-temporal lobe

Visual perception of emotion cues in dogs: a critical review of methodologies

Macaque Brainnetome Atlas: A Multifaceted Brain Map with Parcellation, Connection, and Histology

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