Decoding Human Emotional Faces in the Dog’s Brain

Hernández-Pérez, Raúl; Concha, Luis; Cuaya, Laura V.

doi:10.1101/134080

Cited by 5 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…The happy faces we predicted to be perceived more positively and with pleasant expectations, e.g. praise, joy, reward 64 . In the behavioural preference tests (Experiment 3), we expected the dogs to spend more time on the "caregiver's side" of the test arena, and to prefer to look at and to approach the caregiver stimuli compared to the stranger and the familiar person displayed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 77%

“…The display of happy emotional expressions led to activation changes in the caudate nucleus, a brain region previously associated with reward processing (e.g. 86 ), and the perception of human faces in dogs 57,58 . Other than that, we observed the same pattern as described above with the happy caregiver eliciting activation in limbic regions (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Six previous studies have already investigated the dog's brain activities while they watched human faces. While a lack of reporting and analysis standards makes it hard to compare the findings in terms of the precise locations of brain areas that are activated, researchers consistently found areas in the canine temporal lobe that responded significantly more to dynamic 56 or static 57 images of human faces than to the respective stimuli of everyday objects, especially showing activations in the temporal cortex and caudate nucleus when viewing happy human faces 58 . Another study 59 identified separate temporal brain areas for processing human and dog faces.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Karl

Boch

Zamansky

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Behavioural studies revealed that the dog–human relationship resembles the human mother–child bond, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we report the results of a multi-method approach combining fMRI (N = 17), eye-tracking (N = 15), and behavioural preference tests (N = 24) to explore the engagement of an attachment-like system in dogs seeing human faces. We presented morph videos of the caregiver, a familiar person, and a stranger showing either happy or angry facial expressions. Regardless of emotion, viewing the caregiver activated brain regions associated with emotion and attachment processing in humans. In contrast, the stranger elicited activation mainly in brain regions related to visual and motor processing, and the familiar person relatively weak activations overall. While the majority of happy stimuli led to increased activation of the caudate nucleus associated with reward processing, angry stimuli led to activations in limbic regions. Both the eye-tracking and preference test data supported the superior role of the caregiver’s face and were in line with the findings from the fMRI experiment. While preliminary, these findings indicate that cutting across different levels, from brain to behaviour, can provide novel and converging insights into the engagement of the putative attachment system when dogs interact with humans.

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confidence: 77%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Karl

Boch

Zamansky

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…experiments where dogs have viewed facial expressions from 2D presentations, aggressive or threatening faces have often provoked pronounced responses in dogs in comparison with other expressions 11,12,14,34 , and emotional effects have been present in fMRI data of dogs 19,20 . Therefore, we also expected brain responses especially to threatening expressions of both species to differ from the responses to neutral or pleasant expressions.…”

Section: Threat and Emotional Information Of Facial Expressions In Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent advances in utilizing non-invasive functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) in dogs have already revealed face specificity in the dog brain 17 , 18 . Furthermore, dog fMRI studies have shown differentiation in canine processing of human and dog faces 19 and between different emotional expressions 20 . As in humans and other primates 21 , temporo–occipital brain regions appear important for processing of faces in dogs 17 , 18 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time-resolved classification of dog brain signals reveals early processing of faces, species and emotion

Kujala

Kauppi

Törnqvist

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Dogs process faces and emotional expressions much like humans, but the time windows important for face processing in dogs are largely unknown. By combining our non-invasive electroencephalography (EEG) protocol on dogs with machine-learning algorithms, we show category-specific dog brain responses to pictures of human and dog facial expressions, objects, and phase-scrambled faces. We trained a support vector machine classifier with spatiotemporal EEG data to discriminate between responses to pairs of images. The classification accuracy was highest for humans or dogs vs. scrambled images, with most informative time intervals of 100–140 ms and 240–280 ms. We also detected a response sensitive to threatening dog faces at 30–40 ms; generally, responses differentiating emotional expressions were found at 130–170 ms, and differentiation of faces from objects occurred at 120–130 ms. The cortical sources underlying the highest-amplitude EEG signals were localized to the dog visual cortex.

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Tailored haemodynamic response function increases detection power of fMRI in awake dogs (Canis familiaris)

Boch

Karl

Sladky

et al. 2020

Preprint

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19Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of awake and unrestrained dogs 20 (Canis familiaris) has been established as a novel opportunity for comparative 21 neuroimaging, promising important insights into the evolutionary roots of human brain 22 function and cognition. However, data processing and analysis pipelines are often 23 derivatives of methodological standards developed for human neuroimaging, which 24 may be problematic due to profound neurophysiological and anatomical differences 25 between humans and dogs. Here, we explore whether dog fMRI studies would 26 benefit from a tailored dog haemodynamic response function (HRF). In two 27 independent experiments, dogs were presented with different visual stimuli. BOLD 28 signal changes in the visual cortex during these experiments were used for (a) the 29 identification and estimation of a tailored dog HRF, and (b) the independent 30 validation of the resulting dog HRF estimate. Time course analyses revealed that the 31 BOLD signal in the primary visual cortex peaks significantly earlier in dogs compared 32 to humans, while being comparable in shape. Deriving a tailored dog HRF 33 significantly improved the model fit in both experiments, compared to the canonical 34 HRF used in human fMRI. Using the dog HRF yielded significantly increased 35 activation during visual stimulation, extending from the occipital lobe, to the caudal 36 parietal cortex, the bilateral temporal cortex, and into bilateral hippocampal and 37 thalamic regions. In sum, our findings provide robust evidence for an earlier onset of 38 the dog HRF in a visual stimulation paradigm, and suggest that using such an HRF 39 will be important to increase fMRI detection power in canine neuroimaging. By 40 providing the parameters of the tailored dog HRF and related code, we encourage 41 and enable other researchers to validate whether our findings generalize to other 42 sensory modalities and experimental paradigms. 43

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Decoding Human Emotional Faces in the Dog’s Brain

Cited by 5 publications

References 62 publications

Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Exploring the dog–human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures

Time-resolved classification of dog brain signals reveals early processing of faces, species and emotion

Tailored haemodynamic response function increases detection power of fMRI in awake dogs (Canis familiaris)

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