Dog Experts' Brains Distinguish Socially Relevant ...

[minkee]

Dog Experts' Brains Distinguish Socially Relevant Body Postures Similarly in Dogs and Humans

Now, I'll admit that I can barely decipher the title of this one but we seemed to enjoy dissecting the last one, so here it is.

We read conspecifics' social cues effortlessly, but little is known about our abilities to understand social gestures of other species. To investigate the neural underpinnings of such skills, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of experts and non-experts of dog behavior while they observed humans or dogs either interacting with, or facing away from a conspecific. The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) of both subject groups dissociated humans facing toward each other from humans facing away, and in dog experts, a distinction also occurred for dogs facing toward vs. away in a bilateral area extending from the pSTS to the inferior temporo-occipital cortex: the dissociation of dog behavior was significantly stronger in expert than control group. Furthermore, the control group had stronger pSTS responses to humans than dogs facing toward a conspecific, whereas in dog experts, the responses were of similar magnitude. These findings suggest that dog experts' brains distinguish socially relevant body postures similarly in dogs and humans.

[Nettle]

Read it twice and still don't understand it Do they do subtitles?

[ClareMarsh]

I read it as, if you can "read" dog body language your brain fires in the same way as when you are reading human interactions (assuming you can read human I guess ). If you can't it doesn't. But I COULD have got that completely wrong

[minkee]

No that is right

But I wonder if it just means that 'dog experts' are better at reading ALL body language, and are on the look out for it, whereas everyone else is less aware.

[JudyN]

It doesn't surprise me - I'd be interested in seeing the results of tests on 'bog standard' dog owners, too. Many people look at dogs and just see 'a dog', but most people on this forum, on meeting a dog, probably go through a more complex mental process than when they see another person - how old is it, is it friendly, fearful, happy, playful, confident, would it like to say hello or not? It would also be interesting to compare positive (his tail is wagging, but quite high, and his ears are back...) vs dominance-based (I don't care what it's doing, it's trying to dominate you...) owners/trainers.

You could also repeat the experiment asking the controls to decide whether the dogs are happy or not. It might not be to do with built-in brain differences as much as whether they are interested in the relationship between the dogs. Someone who isn't interested in dogs may be able to try to process their body language if asked (though they won't be able to interpret what they see so well), whereas a trainer probably can't 'turn it off', any more than they can see a smiley or a sad face and not interpret it as such.

[Suzette]

Interesting stuff, (assuming I deciphered it correctly! ) but I think they worked waaaayyy too hard on making that paragraph as difficult to read as humanly possible!

[Nettle]

Interesting stuff, (assuming I deciphered it correctly! ) but I think they worked waaaayyy too hard on making that paragraph as difficult to read as humanly possible!

Thank you for saving my self-esteem never use easy terms when complex ones are available!

I think it is very much that those of us who study body-language study it with everything. I give my clients 'homework' which involves going to dog-walky places without their dogs and watching dogs and humans, so that they can assess approaching dogs and dog/person combos accurately. You'd love my running commentary on approaching dogs/owners when we are doing reactive dog work