Dogs’ brains are sensitive to the familiar high-pitched “cute” voice tone that adult humans, especially women, use to talk to babies, according to a new study.
The research, published recently in the journal Communications Biology, found “exciting similarities” between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with such a high-pitched tone feature.
Humans tend to speak with a specific speech style characterised by exaggerated prosody, or patterns of stress and intonation in a language, when communicating with individuals having limited language competence.
Such speech has previously been found to be very important for the healthy cognitive, social and language development of children, who are also tuned to such a high-pitched voice.
But researchers, including those from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, hoped to assess whether dog brains are also sensitive to this way of communication.
In the study, conscious family dogs were made to listen to dog, infant and adult-directed speech recorded from 12 women and men in real-life interactions.
As the dogs listened, their brain activities were measured using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan.
The study found the sound-processing regions of the dogs’ brains responded more to dog- and infant-directed than adult-directed speech.
This marked the first neurological evidence that dog brains are tuned to speech directed specifically at them.
“Studying how dog brains process dog-directed speech is exciting, because it can help us understand how exaggerated prosody contributes to efficient speech processing in a nonhuman species skilled at relying on different speech cues,” explained Anna Gergely, co-first author of the study.
Scientists also found dog- and infant-directed speech sensitivity of dog brains was more pronounced when the speakers were women, and was affected by voice pitch and its variation.
These findings suggest the way we speak to dogs matters, and that their brain is specifically sensitive to the higher-pitched voice tone typical to the female voice.
“Remarkably, the voice tone patterns characterizing women’s dog-directed speech are not typically used in dog-dog communication – our results may thus serve evidence for a neural preference that dogs developed during their domestication,” said Anna Gábor, co-first author of the study.
“Dog brains’ increased sensitivity to dog-directed speech spoken by women specifically may be due to the fact that women more often speak to dogs with exaggerated prosody than men,” Dr Gabor said.
Barely able to lift her head, this poor dog has learned to communicate with her gaze, conveying a poignant and sorrowful tale.
When He Saw His Saviors, He Used the Last of His Strength to Wag His Tail in Thanks
Early morning on 15 Jan, ONG Paraíso dos Focinhos got report about this dog, they were totally shocked.
A lady found this poor dog on her way to work. It might abandoned there for a while, couldn’t stand up, couldn’t eat food she supplied or understand.
The kind lady couldn’t transport the weak dog to her office, so she took few images, filmed a short movie & submitted to ONG Paraíso dos Focinhos.
Before leaving, she also covered it with her blanket. The dog waved his tail as pleading her don’t abandon him.
Rescue squad went there as swiftly as they could. The poor dog was in a lot of discomfort and totally dehydrated.
They took blood test to see if if he has synopsis. Blood transfusion is needed as he couldn’t eat adequately.
The brave boy gained 4 pounds in just few days, but he still couldn’t stand up and walk correctly.
They named her Dega, and she started to gain appetize about day 7.
After 3 weeks, Dega’s leg was considerably stronger and still quite slender and couldn’t run correctly.
3 months after they found her. She’s so different now and it’s time to reunion with her rescuer…
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