Your Dog Really Does Understand what You’re Saying, Brain Scans Show

If you’ve always suspected your dog can understand what you’re saying, it turns out you were correct.

In a new study published by the journal Science, researchers used brain scans to uncover evidence that revealed dogs process words with the left side of their brain, while the tone of the voice was processed with the right side—the same setup as in humans.

To reach their findings the study scientists recruited 13 dogs of varying breeds from 1 to 12 years old. The researchers played recordings of a trainer talking to the dogs in various combinations of positive and neutral words and tones. For instance, in one documenting the trainer would use positive words like “well done!” with a positive high-pitched tone. In a different recording, the trainer might use neutral words like “if” and “yet” with a similar positive tone.

The study team found the dogs only registered praise if the phrases and inflexion were positive. On the other hand, gibberish spoken in reassuring tone of voice or a meaningful message in a neutral intonation didn’t register as praise.

“Dog brains care about both what we say and how we say it,” lead researcher Attila Andics, a neuroscientist at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest, told the Associated Press. “Praise can work as a reward only if both word meaning and intonation match.”

Andics said the research results indicate the mental capacity for language developed earlier than prior believed and what puts humans above other species language-wise is the creation of words.

“The neural capacities to process words that were thought by many to be uniquely human are actually shared with other species,” he said. “This suggests that the big change that made humans able to start using words was not a big change in neural capacity.”

While other animals probably have a capacity to understand language like dogs do, their lack of interest in human speech makes it challenging to test, Andics said.

Dogs, conversely, have been around humans for millennia, and that means they have been bred to pay attention to what people say to them and the way that they say it.

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Image credit: Enikő Kubinyi

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