Dogs’ brains are sensitive to the familiar high-pitched “cute” voice tone that adult humans, especially women, use to talk to babies, according to a new study.
The research, published recently in the journal Communications Biology, found “exciting similarities” between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with such a high-pitched tone feature.
Humans tend to speak with a specific speech style characterised by exaggerated prosody, or patterns of stress and intonation in a language, when communicating with individuals having limited language competence.
Such speech has previously been found to be very important for the healthy cognitive, social and language development of children, who are also tuned to such a high-pitched voice.
But researchers, including those from the Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, hoped to assess whether dog brains are also sensitive to this way of communication.
In the study, conscious family dogs were made to listen to dog, infant and adult-directed speech recorded from 12 women and men in real-life interactions.
As the dogs listened, their brain activities were measured using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan.
The study found the sound-processing regions of the dogs’ brains responded more to dog- and infant-directed than adult-directed speech.
This marked the first neurological evidence that dog brains are tuned to speech directed specifically at them.
“Studying how dog brains process dog-directed speech is exciting, because it can help us understand how exaggerated prosody contributes to efficient speech processing in a nonhuman species skilled at relying on different speech cues,” explained Anna Gergely, co-first author of the study.
Scientists also found dog- and infant-directed speech sensitivity of dog brains was more pronounced when the speakers were women, and was affected by voice pitch and its variation.
These findings suggest the way we speak to dogs matters, and that their brain is specifically sensitive to the higher-pitched voice tone typical to the female voice.
“Remarkably, the voice tone patterns characterizing women’s dog-directed speech are not typically used in dog-dog communication – our results may thus serve evidence for a neural preference that dogs developed during their domestication,” said Anna Gábor, co-first author of the study.
“Dog brains’ increased sensitivity to dog-directed speech spoken by women specifically may be due to the fact that women more often speak to dogs with exaggerated prosody than men,” Dr Gabor said.
Dog, paralyzed and severely injured, stuck in a river, sobbed profusely after being rescued
Broddick’s story was heartbreaking and moving to the bone. Some dogs followed the unfortunate dog, and while escaping, he slipped into a river and became caught in it.
He had several bruises and swellings on his neck, head, ears, and cheeks. His left eye was injured and only partly closed. There were no words to convey how desperate he appeared at that moment.
A nice Samaritan arrived around six o’clock in the morning and brought him to the emergency vet. Brodick’s herniated discs were causing him a lot of difficulties and pain, so the doctor started treating him for spinal block.
Brodick was a bright and understanding dog, but he was unlucky in life. Surely, the days of pain will come to an end.
His scratches and bites on his body had nearly totally healed, and his skin had smoothed out. He was taken off the wing and guided with a support belt. He was eating properly, but his weight had dropped.
Brodick was able to breathe fresh air when the wheelchair was significantly changed. The bad news is that the lining is flowering and the parallel gland may have decayed.
Brodick’s basic health remained unchanged; he was eating, drinking, and defecating mainly formally. Throughout the night, there were violent seizures. The cause was necrosis, which was spreading rapidly. Despite regular therapy with chymotrypsin, it can spread throughout the body.
Brodick also had a huge tumor in his spine that had developed into soft tissue; unfortunately, this tumor is cancerous. Sepsis had begun, according to blood tests. Stronger pain medicines barely worked for a few hours.
Vets chose to let Brodick go where he was confident there would be no more pain after several days of thought.
“Soft clouds to you in paradise, our sweet Brodick.”
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