Neural Responses of Pet Dogs Witnessing Their Caregiver’s Positive Interactions with a Conspecific: An fMRI Study

Karl, Sabrina; Sladky, Ronald; Lamm, Claus; Huber, Ludwig

doi:10.1093/texcom/tgab047

Cited by 27 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…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. A recent dog neuroimaging study [76] also showed that the visual regions observed in our study play a crucial part in the perception of complex social interactions, which would confirm their important role for social perception.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

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: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

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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“…In collaboration with the other co-authors, this coil was developed by CW and EL at the Medical University Vienna. Our intention was to overcome the limitation of commonly used coils (human knee coils, e.g., Jia et al, 2016; Thompkins et al, 2016; Karl et al, 2020, 2021, as well as FlexCoils, e.g. Cuaya et al, 2016; Szabo et al, 2019), which are not tailored to the anatomy of the dog’s skull and thus may result in sub-optimal signal-to-noise ratios and data quality overall.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the present paper, we apply the K9 coil and compare its images and image quality to a commonly used human knee coil (15 channel receive coil; Siemens Healthineers, Germany) we previously used to scan the same animals (Boch et al, 2021; Karl et al, 2021). To this end, we collected data from nine dogs in three different imaging modalities (structural, functional: task based, functional: resting-state), with the two different coils, using otherwise identical MR scanning parameters.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validation of a new coil array tailored for dog functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies

Guran

Sladky

Karl

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Comparative neuroimaging allows for the identification of similarities and differences between species. It provides an important and promising avenue, to answer questions about the evolutionary origins of the brain's organization, in terms of both structure and function. Dog fMRI has recently become one particularly promising and increasingly used approach to study brain function and coevolution. In dog neuroimaging, image acquisition has so far been mostly performed with coils originally developed for use in human MRI. Since such coils have been tailored to human anatomy, their sensitivity and data quality is likely not optimal for dog MRI. Therefore, we developed a multi-channel receive coil (K9 coil) tailored for high-resolution functional imaging in canines, optimized for dog cranial anatomy. In this paper we report structural (n = 9) as well as functional imaging data (resting-state, n = 6; simple visual paradigm, n = 9) collected with the K9 coil in comparison to reference data collected with a human knee coil. Our results show that the K9 coil significantly outperforms the human knee coil, improving the signal-to-noise ratio across the imaging modalities. We noted increases of roughly 45% signal-to-noise in the structural and functional domain. In terms of translation to functional fMRI data collected in a visual flickering checkerboard paradigm, group-level analyses show that the K9 coil performs better than the knee coil as well. These findings demonstrate how hardware improvements may be instrumental in driving data quality, and thus, quality of imaging results, for dog-human comparative neuroimaging.

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“…Consequently, facial expressions are one of the principal elements that allow individuals to identify the emotions expressed by others in a social group [ 19 , 97 ] and are the main pathway for transmitting the affective information that leads them to act in any given situation involving an emitter and a receiver of facial signals [ 98 ]. Even though it is still controversial to state that dogs use facial gestures to communicate their mental state, in a study conducted by Karl et al [ 99 ], the response of 12 domestic dogs to positive social and non-social neutral stimuli was assessed using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results showed that limbic areas such as the left amygdala, hypothalamus, and insula were activated during positive social interactions.…”

Section: Emotions In the Dogmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current Advances in Assessment of Dog’s Emotions, Facial Expressions, and Their Use for Clinical Recognition of Pain

Mota-Rojas

Marcet-Rius

Ogi

et al. 2021

Animals

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Animals’ facial expressions are involuntary responses that serve to communicate the emotions that individuals feel. Due to their close co-existence with humans, broad attention has been given to identifying these expressions in certain species, especially dogs. This review aims to analyze and discuss the advances in identifying the facial expressions of domestic dogs and their clinical utility in recognizing pain as a method to improve daily practice and, in an accessible and effective way, assess the health outcome of dogs. This study focuses on aspects related to the anatomy and physiology of facial expressions in dogs, their emotions, and evaluations of their eyebrows, eyes, lips, and ear positions as changes that reflect pain or nociception. In this regard, research has found that dogs have anatomical configurations that allow them to generate changes in their expressions that similar canids—wolves, for example—cannot produce. Additionally, dogs can perceive emotions similar to those of their human tutors due to close human-animal interaction. This phenomenon—called “emotional contagion”—is triggered precisely by the dog’s capacity to identify their owners’ gestures and then react by emitting responses with either similar or opposed expressions that correspond to positive or negative stimuli, respectively. In conclusion, facial expressions are essential to maintaining social interaction between dogs and other species, as in their bond with humans. Moreover, this provides valuable information on emotions and the perception of pain, so in dogs, they can serve as valuable elements for recognizing and evaluating pain in clinical settings.

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Neural Responses of Pet Dogs Witnessing Their Caregiver’s Positive Interactions with a Conspecific: An fMRI Study

Cited by 27 publications

References 110 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

Validation of a new coil array tailored for dog functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies

Current Advances in Assessment of Dog’s Emotions, Facial Expressions, and Their Use for Clinical Recognition of Pain

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