Dogs have been proven to be able to distinguish between our emotions
Dogs have been proven to be able to distinguish between our emotions
Anonim

Mexican scientists have proven this with a neural network.

Dogs have been proven to be able to distinguish between our emotions
Dogs have been proven to be able to distinguish between our emotions

Who hasn't wondered what the four-legged friend thinks about when he looks at us? Scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico decided to get to the bottom of the truth. A team of researchers found out if dogs can distinguish human emotions.

University staff published the Decoding Human Emotional Faces in the Dog's Brain study, in which they studied the brain activity of four border collies using functional magnetic resonance therapy (fMRI) technology. During the scan, the dogs were shown the faces of strangers with different emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear.

The scientists then analyzed the brain patterns of the dogs using a neural network and found out which emotion they saw corresponds to it.

The most prominent was the pattern recorded when the dog looked at the happy face. At this point, the border collie had increased activity in the temporal cortex of the brain, which is responsible for processing complex visual information.

The data obtained during this experiment is similar to the results of the Describing Semantic Representations of Brain Activity Evoked by Visual Stimuli study of the human brain, which was carried out by Japanese scientists in early 2018. In it, they also used fMRI technology, and the neural network described what the person saw. And she did it quite accurately: the AI could determine when a person was looking at a dog lying at the door, and when - at a group of people by the sea.

Despite the fact that the Mexican researchers limited themselves to a few emotions, the results showed that dogs are able to understand us. Although for dog owners this is obvious: my dog knew when I was sad and when I was happy. At the same time, he reacted with amazing accuracy: he could come up and lie down next to me, or, conversely, be playful and joyful.

All that remains is to invent a portable device that will scan a dog's brain on the go. You can make something like a portable scanner of the human brain, similar to a Spartan helmet. This would help owners better understand how their pet perceives the world around it.

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