Dogs' Brains 'Not Hardwired' To Respond To Human Faces (theguardian.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: For despite having evolved facial expressions that tug on the heartstrings of owners, researchers have found that unlike humans, dogs do not have brain regions that respond specifically to faces. "It's amazing dogs do so well when it comes to reading emotions and identify from faces, despite the fact that they seem not to have a brain designed for having a focus on [them]," said Dr Attila Andics, co-author of the study from Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary. Writing in the Journal of Neuroscience, Andics and colleagues report how they scanned the brains of 20 family dogs, including labradors and border collies, and 30 humans with each shown six sequences of 48 videos of either the front or the back of a human or dog head.
The team found particular regions of the dog's brain showed differing activity depending on the species shown, with a greater response to dog videos. However, there was no difference in any region when dogs were shown a human or dog face compared with the back of its head. By contrast, regions of the human brain showed different activity depending whether a face or the back of a head was shown, with faces generally generating a stronger response. A small subset of these regions also showed a difference between species, in general showing a stronger response to humans. Andics said the further analysis showed the dog brain was primarily focused on whether the animal was looking at a dog or a human, whereas the human brain was mainly focused on whether there was a face.
The team found particular regions of the dog's brain showed differing activity depending on the species shown, with a greater response to dog videos. However, there was no difference in any region when dogs were shown a human or dog face compared with the back of its head. By contrast, regions of the human brain showed different activity depending whether a face or the back of a head was shown, with faces generally generating a stronger response. A small subset of these regions also showed a difference between species, in general showing a stronger response to humans. Andics said the further analysis showed the dog brain was primarily focused on whether the animal was looking at a dog or a human, whereas the human brain was mainly focused on whether there was a face.
Skepticism (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember kids, when you read "brain scan" in the news, you should automatically think "dead salmon [wired.com]".
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Theres actually a terrifying alternative reading of that (and thankfully one that is almost certainly nonsense). That is, dead brains can still think. Which would be a god damn nightmare.
Thankfully what we do know about the brain is that it rapidly depolarizes and falls apart after it loses ciirculation (specifically through a mechanism called the ischemic casade) so the odds of finding yourself trapped in a dead body, aware of the horror involved in decomposing in a hole, is thankfully somewhere around zer
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From your article: "Brain scientists can do things with fMRI machines they otherwise couldn't, said Ed Vul, an MIT neuroscience graduate."
The guy's name is Ed Vul or E. Vul.
I don't know if I would like my name to be E.Vul.
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It's an uncanny valley that has a significant amount of rebound if you can make it to Dr. E. Vul
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From the article:
The point of the salmon study isn't to prove that fMRI shouldn't be used or is worthless.
As a former neuroscientist, I can say that most of the studies in the field avoid the dead salmon problem by actually using correction for multiple comparisons.
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i have to ask, former neuroscientist?
what did you decide to do instead of that? It would seem that a profession that takes so much specialized training wouldn't be something someone just decides to walk away from
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Specialized training for neuroscience is basically "Do a PhD in neuroscience". For those who don't know; that translates to having done a 3+ year degree in a relevant subject, then doing what amounts to a 3+ year apprenticeship with someone who is already working in the field, and that's just to get started.
The thing is, these days there's a significant part of neuroscience - the bit that uses fMRI - which is pretty much applied machine learning. It turns out that is wildly transferable to things like dat
Not dog owners, I think... (Score:3)
I have to wonder whether any of the research team own dogs. If they did, they'd learn pretty quickly that if you want your dog to look in a certain direction, and with luck notice something in particular, you stare in that direction. It's not 100%, but it works fairly often.
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So, based on this information, how do you gather that dogs don't have specific regions for faces?
But do wolves do the same? (Score:2)
So, based on this information, how do you gather that dogs don't have specific regions for faces?
"Human faces" not simply "faces". Interpreting canine faces would be part of their well developed canine body language skills.
And I'll take a slightly different approach regarding hard wired. If its a behavior that can be demonstrated in wolves then its unrelated to **hard wired** recognition of a **human** face. At best its human faces are close enough to canine faces.
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"Human faces" not simply "faces". Interpreting canine faces would be part of their well developed canine body language skills.
From the article:
"However, there was no difference in any region when dogs were shown a human or dog face compared with the back of its head."
You may want to bother reading the summary if you are going to criticize people for not understanding an article.
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"Human faces" not simply "faces". Interpreting canine faces would be part of their well developed canine body language skills.
From the article:
"However, there was no difference in any region when dogs were shown a human or dog face compared with the back of its head."
You may want to bother reading the summary if you are going to criticize people for not understanding an article.
Guess again. The article is saying showing the face and back of the head of the same species has the same result. It is not saying humans faces and canine faces are having the same result.
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That has nothing to do with face recognition (Score:2)
Its simply body posture. I doubt you could differentiate many sheep faces but you'd be able to tell which way they were facing.
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I don't think they're arguing against dog owners' generally held beliefs about canine intelligence, what they're saying is that this can't be explained by the dogs brains being hardwired for faces as had been previously assumed, (largely because our brains are) which actually makes their empathetic capabilities and the inherent versatility of their relatively less complex brains even more impressive, not less.
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There's published work on this. I'm surprised some Slashdot readers are too stupid and feckless to have looked it up.
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Dogs have as much of their brains wired to their nose as we have wired to our eyes. Their brains being simpler isn't the issue here, it's that they are first and foremost olfactory creatures. Their brains contain sufficient complexity to be wired for human faces, but it's in the wrong place. On the other hand, they probably are wired for human asses.
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Pro dog trainer here with 50 years experience (mostly working Labradors). I've had a deaf dog who read lips. I've seen dogs react like OMG YOU'RE DEAD if you keep your eyes closed long enough. They may not have a brain region dedicated to facial recognition, but at least the bright ones DO pay attention, and can often accurately read expressions. I'd say it's just an extension (or extrapolation on their part) of reading body language, which dogs are naturally expert at, and doesn't really require a differen
My Goodness (Score:3)
This is so stupid, and ignorant. Have these people ever met a dog?!?
Have they ever known a puppy?!
Dogs and humans communicate primarily through sounds. The human learns the faces that the dog makes when it makes different emotive sounds, and then associates that face with that emotion.
Why the fuck would the dog have to have known anything other than how make dog sounds, for that to happen? This is like, one of those studies that is like... "what if we didn't even ask this question, would we already know the answer?" Easily falsifiable.
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Dogs and humans communicate primarily through sounds.
Not really, we communicate mostly by smell (for the dog), looks, gestures and pose. Sounds are a distant fourth or fifth. To some humans it may seem like sound is important, but that's because they do much less of the work involved.
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Right, so your internal model is one refuted by the story.
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More relevant: humans evolved to recognise others in an extended social structure by their face.
Dogs use smell.
I would like to to see the research repeated, but instead of showing the dogs faces, give them smells.
Does a special part of the brain light up when they smell another dog's bum? Is arse-recognition hard-wired?
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And even ignoring smell, dogs communicate with body language emphasized by sound, while we communicate with sound emphasized by body language. Is the dog's brain centers used for understanding body language getting triggered more when looking at a face as compared to the back of a head?
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The results, Scott added, suggests dogs may be rely less on faces than other information. “One of the main ways dogs know who their friends are and how they are doing is their smell,” she said.
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So you have like MRI eyes? How do you translate your anecdotes into hard research about which brain regions light up when seeing certain things? Every single comment in this thread seems to be some dog owner having no clue about how science works.
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Puppy Training Class, First Command (Score:2)
The first thing we teach Puppies when training them to be good pets, is the command "Watch Me" in which we condition the puppy to look into our eyes to await a new command.
This gives people the impression that the dog really is looking at our face, while they are just trained to do that while they pay attention, as well to redirect their attention away from some other distraction.
My poor old dog is going blind, but he will still "Watch Me" even if he cannot see me, just as well as he did 11 years ago. Becau
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Poisson studied Fresnel's theory in detail and, being a supporter of the particle theory of light, looked for a way to prove it wrong. Poisson thought that he had found a flaw when he argued that a consequence of Fresnel's theory was that there would exist an on-axis bright spot in the shadow of a circular obstacle, where there should be complete darkness according to the particle theory of light. Since the Arago spot is not easily observed in everyday situations, Poisson interpreted it as an absurd result and that it should disprove Fresnel's theory.
Not that surprising, I guess (Score:4, Insightful)
My Labrador certainly doesn’t respond to FaceTime calls. 2D faces and voices over a crappy speaker just don’t seem to interest him. Nor does he seem to care if I’m smiling or putting on an angry face.
If I had to guess, I’d say he’s more in sync with smells and patterns. He probably recognizes far more scents from me than I’d care to think about, and he certainly recognizes that a vehicle parking in the carport means that mommy or daddy will be walking in the door shortly thereafter. Body movements (e.g. my posture when I’m playful vs when I’m upset with him) are possibly things he recognizes as well - though it’s also possible that I’m giving off some kind of scent in those cases that I’m not aware of, and he acts on that.
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Nor does he seem to care if I’m smiling or putting on an angry face.
From what I've experienced first hand, as well as read about - dogs often do react specifically to the expression of a person's mouth, at least if a dog is not familiar with that person. A big toothy no-gap smile (from a human) can be interpreted as aggression, for instance.
But yeah, speaking anecdotally as a life-long dog owner... this doesn't seem particularly surprising. Vocalization seems to be the main driver.
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Then I have another dog that always barks at old ladies, but I think that's either their smell or posture that bothers her.
Flawed study (Score:2)
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I would be surprised if dogs responded to still images at all. Most dogs either don't get it or don't care. You cannot extrapolate response to a living being from responses (or lack thereof) of static pictures. Dogs can tell the difference and are much more interested in the living creature.
Static pictures? I dunno. But I can tell you that my dogs go batshit crazy when they see other dogs (or quadrupeds) on television. I suspect they can tell the difference between moving images and living beings, but the former still sets them off.
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My pet dog doesn't respond to dogs on the TV. Instead, she responds to horses. She doesn't go crazy (she's much too calm for that), but she does watch them intently.
Dogs: she couldn't care less -- I even tried playing videos of dogs howling.
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Static pictures? I dunno. But I can tell you that my dogs go batshit crazy when they see other dogs (or quadrupeds) on television. I suspect they can tell the difference between moving images and living beings, but the former still sets them off.
Maybe they can, maybe they can't. Maybe some can and some can't. Some animals go around to the back of the TV to see where the other animals are, some of them bat or snap at things moving offscreen as if they're going to come out from behind the TV, and some just watch TV. I've seen all of these behaviors from both cats and dogs, except I have yet to see a dog circle a TV. That might just be because of where the TVs have been located, though.
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I would be surprised if dogs responded to still images at all.
I have a toy dog (rather realistic) peering out the window of my truck. I've seen a number of dogs that take an interest in it. Not as much as they would with a live dog, but they seem to spend some time looking at it.
I've also seen cats that will closely inspect a porcelain cat statue. A friend of mine has one (plus some actual cats) and funny pictures of the cats getting into staring contests with it. I told her that they were just sizing it up to knock it off the shelf at the first opportunity.
Just curious as to how easy it is to break (Score:2)
I've also seen cats that will closely inspect a porcelain cat statue.
They are just investigating how easy it would be to knock it over and break it.
Obligatory Duke Nukem Reference (Score:2)
Am I the only one who immediately thought of Duke Nukem when I read this?
"Your face, your a**... what's the difference?"
Breaking News, neither are people hard wired for.. (Score:2)
dogs facing. Can you imagine having dog's faces hard wired into your brain?
I love dogs. But people do not understand them on an instinctual level, you have to learn about them. They also need to learn about us. For them this is often an essential job - if you fail you do not get adopted/sold/fed/loved. For us it is more of a joy than work
Alert: Scientists run out of things to study! (Score:2)
I remember reading a story not too long ago where dogs were hardwired to see human faces. Is this the counter-science?
I'm glad that people are able to study anything they want, but I'm having trouble imagining how this thesis even came up. How are people able to get funding for these types of studies?
--
He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all. - William Osler
On the other hand... (Score:3)
Faces no, expressions - yes (Score:2)
After all, when a dog is angry it bares its teeth and growls. Any other dog/wolve that didn't recognise that would be at a severe disadvantage. Similarly tail wagging. But its not face recognitiion. If there were 100 labradors in a room I could certainly tell which of them were very angry, but I doubt I could tell one from the other. I imagine its the same for dogs wrt humans.
Flawed study (Score:2)
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Did the dogs recognize chins? Cause they spend most of their time looking up from a foot off the ground...
Do you recognize necks? Because most heads are mounted on one, and they can pivot downwards. Say, towards a dog.
Important Information (Score:2)
It should be noted that if you have an old TV with a slower refresh rate, your Dog can't really tell what's happening. Anything 75hz or above, and with the right color palette, you should be OK. The channel DogTV uses specific colors and refresh rates for your Dog. People always assume their furry friends can see the same thing on TV, which is a myth.
I just thought it was important to point this out.
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I understand it's the same with cats though I'm not sure why. If I take a deck of cards and flash them even at 5/second you're going to pick up on the movement. So if you're looking at a standard 30 frame/second display they should detect movement. Seems like if they need to be at 70 Hz then the house lights would drive them batty.
I remember taking a chemical camera picture of a TV set back in the 1980s. I think it was set at 1/250. I could see the electron beam painting the screen.
Wrong sense? (Score:2)
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They haven't ruled that out.
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Or do you mean that one experiment is insufficient to rule that out? I can't really argue against that.
Remarkable? (Score:2)
Hardly, most dog intelligence is the anthromorphic projection of the owner.