Most dogs respond in specific ways to certain vocalizations, such as another dog barking or humans using certain tones of voice. Of course, this all happens while the dogs are awake.
Now, a new study suggests that they can also process vocalizations during sleep. The work, titled “Event-related potentials indicate differential neural reactivity to species and valence information in vocal stimuli in sleeping dogs,” was published in Scientific Reports.
A team of researchers from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University; ELKH-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group; and the Research Center for Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, all in Budapest, Hungary, conducted a small explorative study in which they measured the event-related potentials (ERPs, a term for measurable neural responses) in family dogs to vocalizations from human family members and other dogs while the subjects were asleep.
Existing research on dog behavior supports the use of dogs as good models for studies in comparative neurobiology.
Studies have shown that much like humans, dogs in wakeful states respond with differing behaviors depending on the valence (levels of positivity and negativity) of vocalizations they hear. They can correlate vocalizations of both dogs and humans with respective facial expressions, and with appropriate pictures. Moreover, in dogs and in humans, sleep has been shown to be important for emotional processing and memory consolidation.
2023-09-10 03:24:02
Source from phys.org
