Pet brains can identify speech, and reveal various activity patterns to a familiar and an unknown language, a brand-new brain imaging study by scientists from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) discovers. Pet brains can detect speech, and show various activity patterns to a familiar and an unknown language, a brand-new brain imaging study by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) discovers. Canine brains can find speech, and reveal different activity patterns to a familiar and an unknown language, a new brain imaging research study by scientists from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) discovers. Pet brains can spot speech, and show different activity patterns to a familiar and an unfamiliar language, a new brain imaging research study by scientists from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) finds. Interestingly, the older the dog was, the much better their brain identified in between the familiar and the unknown language.
When comparing brain actions to speech and non-speech, scientists found distinct activity patterns in pet dogs primary acoustic cortex. This distinction existed independently from whether the stimuli originated from the familiar or the unknown language. There was, however, no evidence that pet brains would have a neural choice for speech over non-speech.
” Dog brains, like human brains, can compare speech and non-speech.”
But the system underlying this speech detection capability might be different from speech level of sensitivity in humans: whereas human brains are specially tuned to speech, dog brains may merely spot the naturalness of the sound,” discusses Raúl Hernández-Pérez, coauthor of the research study.
In addition to speech detection, canine brains might also identify in between Spanish and Hungarian.
Canine brains can identify speech, and reveal various activity patterns to a familiar and an unfamiliar language, a brand-new brain imaging research study by scientists from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) discovers. This is the very first demonstration that a non-human brain can separate two languages. This work has been published in NeuroImage. Credit: Raul Hernandez
These language-specific activity patterns were found in another brain area, the secondary acoustic cortex. Interestingly, the older the pet dog was, the better their brain differentiated between the familiar and the unfamiliar language. “Each language is identified by a variety of acoustic consistencies. Our findings suggest that throughout their lives with people, pet dogs detect the acoustic regularities of the language they are exposed to,” states Hernández-Pérez.
” This research study showed for the very first time that a non-human brain can distinguish between 2 languages.”
It is interesting, due to the fact that it exposes that the capability to learn about the consistencies of a language is not uniquely human. Still, we do not understand whether this capability is pet dogs specialized, or general amongst non-human species. Indeed, it is possible that the brain changes from the 10s of thousand years that dogs have been coping with humans have actually made them better language listeners, but this is not always the case. Future research studies will have to find this out”– concludes Attila Andics, senior author of the research study.
” And if you wonder how Kun-kun is doing after moving to Budapest: he leaves simply as gladly as he resided in Mexico City– he saw snow for the very first time and he enjoys swimming in the Danube. We hope that he and his friends will continue to help us discover the evolution of speech perception,” says Cuaya.
Referral: “Speech naturalness detection and language representation in the canine brain” by Laura V. Cuaya, Raúl Hernández-Pérez, Marianna Boros, Andrea Deme, and Attila Andics, 12 December 2021, NeuroImage.DOI: 10.1016/ j.neuroimage.2021.118811.
This research study was funded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Lendület program, Bolyai János Research Scholarship), the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT), the European Research Council (ERC), the Ministry for Innovation and Technology of Hungary (ÚNKP), the Eötvös Loránd Research Network and the Eötvös Loránd University.
Pet brains can detect speech, and show different activity patterns to a familiar and an unknown language, a new brain imaging research study by scientists from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) discovers. This is the very first presentation that a non-human brain can differentiate two languages. This work has been published in NeuroImage. Credit: Eniko Kubinyi
Canine brains can detect speech, and show various 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) discovers. This is the first demonstration that a non-human brain can distinguish two languages. This work has been published in NeuroImage.
My dog, Kun-kun, came with me. We never ever draw our canines attention to how a particular language sounds. We developed a brain imaging study to find this out.”
Canine brains can detect speech, and show various activity patterns to a familiar and an unknown language, a new brain imaging research study by scientists from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) discovers. This is the very first demonstration that a non-human brain can separate 2 languages. This work has been published in NeuroImage. Credit: Eniko Kubinyi
Kun-kun and 17 other pets were trained to lay motionless in a brain scanner, where we played them speech excerpts of The Little Prince in Spanish and Hungarian. All pet dogs had heard just one of the two languages from their owners, so in this manner we could compare a highly familiar language to a completely unknown one. We likewise played pet dogs rushed variations of these excerpts, which sound entirely abnormal, to check whether they find the difference between speech and non-speech at all.”
