Tuesday, July 5, 2022
No Result
View All Result
Medical Finance
  • Home
  • News
  • Interviews
  • Mediknowledge
  • Insights From Industry
  • Thought Leaders
  • Coronavirus
  • Whitepapers
  • Home
  • News
  • Interviews
  • Mediknowledge
  • Insights From Industry
  • Thought Leaders
  • Coronavirus
  • Whitepapers
No Result
View All Result
Medical Finance
No Result
View All Result
Home News

Dog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to many languages

by Medical Finance
in News
Dog brains can detect speech and show different activity patterns to many languages
9
SHARES
102
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Dog brains can detect speech, and show different activity patterns to a familiar and an unfamiliar language, a new brain imaging study by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) finds. This is the first demonstration that a non-human brain can differentiate two languages. This work has been published in NeuroImage.

Some years ago I moved from Mexico to Hungary to join the Neuroethology of Communication Lab at the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University for my postdoctoral research. My dog, Kun-kun, came with me. Before, I had only talked to him in Spanish. So I was wondering whether Kun-kun noticed that people in Budapest spoke a different language, Hungarian. We know that people, even preverbal human infants, notice the difference. But maybe dogs do not bother.”


Laura V. Cuaya, Study First Author, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Faculty of Science

we never draw our dogs’ attention to how a specific language sounds. We designed a brain imaging study to find this out.

Kun-kun and 17 other dogs were trained to lay motionless in a brain scanner, where we played them speech excerpts of The Little Prince in Spanish and Hungarian. All dogs had heard only one of the two languages from their owners, so this way we could compare a highly familiar language to a completely unfamiliar one. We also played dogs scrambled versions of these excerpts, which sound completely unnatural, to test whether they detect the difference between speech and non-speech at all.”

When comparing brain responses to speech and non-speech, researchers found distinct activity patterns in dogs’ primary auditory cortex. This distinction was there independently from whether the stimuli originated from the familiar or the unfamiliar language. There was, however, no evidence that dog brains would have a neural preference for speech over non-speech.

“Dog brains, like human brains, can distinguish between speech and non-speech.

But the mechanism underlying this speech detection ability may be different from speech sensitivity in humans: whereas human brains are specially tuned to speech, dog brains may simply detect the naturalness of the sound” — explains Raúl Hernández-Pérez, coauthor of the study.

In addition to speech detection, dog brains could also distinguish between Spanish and Hungarian.

These language-specific activity patterns were found in another brain region, the secondary auditory cortex. Interestingly, the older the dog was, the better their brain distinguished between the familiar and the unfamiliar language. “Each language is characterized by a variety of auditory regularities. Our findings suggest that during their lives with humans, dogs pick up on the auditory regularities of the language they are exposed to” — says Hernández-Pérez.

“This study showed for the first time that a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages.

It is exciting, because it reveals that the capacity to learn about the regularities of a language is not uniquely human. Still, we do not know whether this capacity is dogs’ specialty, or general among non-human species. Indeed, it is possible that the brain changes from the tens of thousand years that dogs have been living with humans have made them better language listeners, but this is not necessarily the case. Future studies will have to find this out” — concludes Attila Andics, senior author of the study.

“And if you wonder how Kun-kun is doing after moving to Budapest: he leaves just as happily as he lived in Mexico City – he saw snow for the first time and he loves swimming in the Danube. We hope that he and his friends will continue to help us uncover the evolution of speech perception” — says Cuaya.

Source:

Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Faculty of Science

Journal reference:

Cuaya, L. V., et al. (2021) Speech naturalness detection and language representation in the dog brain. NeuroImage. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118811.

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Medical Finance

Medical Finance

Related Posts

Bacterial biofilms use a developmental patterning mechanism seen in plants and animals

Study shows that key parts of human immunity are shared in bacteria

by Medical Finance
July 5, 2022
0

The human immune system, that marvel of complexity, subtlety, and sophistication, includes a billion-year-old family of proteins used by bacteria...

Omicron variant found to be much less sensitive to neutralizing antibodies than Delta

New and improved method for imaging the structure of neural connections

by Medical Finance
July 5, 2022
0

The glory of tissue expansion technologies is that when structures, such as proteins that build nerve cell connections, are too...

Macrophages in the arteries can “sniff” out their surroundings and cause inflammation

Macrophages in the arteries can “sniff” out their surroundings and cause inflammation

by Medical Finance
July 5, 2022
0

An artery is not like a nose. Or is it? Scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) have discovered...

PhoreMost and POLARISqb announce a multi-target collaboration to investigate next-generation cancer therapies

Study reveals surprising reasons why cancer cells are often forced to rely on fat imports

by Medical Finance
July 5, 2022
0

Columbia and MIT researchers are revealing the surprising reasons why cancer cells are often forced to rely on fat imports,...

Study identifies cellular receptors for alphaviruses shared across mosquitoes, humans, and animals

Study opens a door to better understanding the role of viruses in ecology

by Medical Finance
July 5, 2022
0

The first discovery of viruses infecting a group of microbes that may include the ancestors of all complex life has...

PhoreMost and POLARISqb announce a multi-target collaboration to investigate next-generation cancer therapies

Study opens up a new avenue for the development of selective drug therapies

by Medical Finance
July 5, 2022
0

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have definitively linked the function of a specific domain of...

Next Post
Surveying communities may be a useful tool for predicting COVID-19 case trajectories

UK Prime Minister calls on international tourists to visit one of the most open countries in Europe

Study: Aerosol measurement identifies SARS-CoV 2 PCR positive adults compared with healthy controls. Image Credit: Aliaksandra Post/Shutterstock.com

Study compares exhaled aerosols in SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals and healthy controls

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Login
Notify of
guest
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Support

  • Contact
  • Disclaimer
  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms And Conditions

Categories

  • Coronavirus
  • Insights From Industry
  • Interviews
  • Mediknowledge
  • News
  • Thought Leaders
  • Whitepapers

More News

  • Study: Injectable Slow-Release Hydrogel Formulation of a Plant Virus-Based COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate. Image Credit: New Africa / Shutterstock
    Injectable hydrogels for single-dose COVID-19 vaccination
  • Pregnancy 620x480
    Colorado doubles down on abortion rights as other states — and the high court — reconsider
  • Home
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms And Conditions

© 2022 Medical Finance - Latest Financial and Business News

No Result
View All Result
  • Interviews
  • Mediknowledge
  • News
  • Insights From Industry
  • Coronavirus
  • Thought Leaders
  • Whitepapers
wpDiscuz
0
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x
| Reply