This dogs Shows increased brain sensitivity to comments directed at women more than men get, according to a scientific study published in the journal Communication Biology. The research looked at how dogs, adults, and babies assimilate human speech.
By performing fMRI studies on trained dogs, Hungarian researchers have discovered interesting similarities between the brains of babies and dogs during speech processing with an exaggerated prosody, that is, with forced pronunciation and intonation to make it more understandable.
When communicating with people (such as babies) or dogs who do not yet know how to speak, we speak in a particular style, characterized by an exaggerated prosody to attract and sustain their attention. Talking to the baby is very important as it supports healthy cognitive, social and language development of children.
But are dog brains also sensitive to the way we talk to them? Hungarian researchers to answer this question measured the dog’s brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Thanks to this system, trained pet dogs listened to real-life recordings of 12 women and 12 men.
“It’s exciting to study how dog brains process speech to them because it can help us understand how. Exaggerated prosody contributes to effective speech processing in a nonhuman species Anna Gergely, first author of the study, said she was able to rely on different speech cues (for example, she could follow verbal commands).
Research shows that dogs’ auditory brain regions respond better to self-directed and infant-directed speech than adult-directed speech.This is the first neural evidence that dogs’ brains are specially tuned to talk to themselves.
Women’s speech is more connected to the voice
Curiously, sensitivity in dogs and infants is more pronounced when the speakers are female he was also impressed by the tone and variety of the voice. These results show that The way we talk to our dogs matters and your brain It is particularly sensitive to the exaggerated prosody characteristic of the female voice.
“What makes this result particularly interesting is that in dogs, unlike infants, this sensitivity cannot be explained by ancient responses to certain cues or exposure to female intrauterine voices. Surprisingly, the tonal patterns that characterize female-directed speech are what dogs normally do in inter-canine communication. is not used, so our results can be used as follows: evidence of neural preference Dogs evolved during their domestication,” adds Gábor.
“Increased sensitivity of the dog brain to dog-directed speech, particularly by females may be because women talk to dogs more often than men and have an exaggerated prosody“explains the scientist.
Reference work: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-023-05217-y
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