In a nutshell
* Your smile lights up the temporal cortex of dogs
* The dog brains distinguish some negative emotions

Exploring the mind of dogs is made possible by the support of passionate families.

Let's spread some joy and smile at our furry friends!

6/n
#neuroscience #caninescience #dogsofmastodon #thread #Animbehav2023

Our results don’t mean that dogs cannot distinguish sad from angry humans.

The complexity of emotions is fascinating, and we can't wait to dive deeper and explore the intricacies of the dog brain response to richer multisensory emotional stimuli.

5/n
#neuroscience #caninescience #dogsofmastodon #thread #Animbehav2023

Then, we went to a darker side. We wondered, do dog brains only discriminate positive vs. negative emotions? 🤔

A representational analysis showed that dog brains distinguish angry vs. fearful faces and sad vs. fearful faces, but not sad vs. angry faces.

4/n
#neuroscience #caninescience #dogsofmastodon #thread #Animbehav2023

So, in Experiment 2, we got more emotional! Dogs (n=12) viewed happy, angry, fearful, and sad faces.

We confirm that results from Experiment 1 were driven by happy faces, as a linear SVM classifier discriminated only between happiness and negative emotions.👏

3/n
#neuroscience #caninescience #dogsofmastodon #thread #Animbehav2023

Our fMRI study revealed increased activity in the right temporal cortex and caudate when dogs (n=8) viewed happy faces.

However, as we used neutral faces as a control, we can't confirm that the response was specifically to happy faces and not just any emotion. 🤦

2/n
#neuroscience #caninescience #dogsofmastodon #thread #Animbehav2023