Humans vs. Dogs: How Are Their Facial Expressions Processed? study revealed

Humans and dogs go back a long way in time. Dogs are the first animals to be domesticated by humans. The bond of warmth, love, friendship and loyalty shared by humans and dogs is beautiful. However, do humans understand the emotions of dogs and humans in the same way? This was explored in a recent study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Read this also 8 reasons why dogs and humans have a deep emotional connection

This study was conducted to understand how emotions and expressions are processed by humans, and whether there are any similarities in how both humans and dogs understand emotions. “We had comparative, social cognitive and methodological motivations for this study,” said study author Miamaria Kujala, an assistant professor in comparative cognitive neuroscience at the University of Jyväskylä. Humans have sophisticated neural processing machinery for perceiving faces, and we wanted to explore how the human brain’s processing of human and dog facial expressions progresses in time during the first half second of perception. Furthermore, since empathy influences the subjective experience of others’ emotional expressions, we asked whether it might influence how well we are able to predict individual brain responses with machine-learning processes.

Study findings:

The study was conducted on 15 healthy adult participants, who were an average of 28 years old, had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and had varying levels of familiarity with dogs. These participants were exposed to several photographs of humans and dogs with various expressions of happiness, anger, and aggression. Faces showing neutral expressions were also added. Their brain activity was recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). Researchers found that humans process human and dog expressions in similar ways. Read this also Do you want to have a deeper bond with your pet dog? Study says look into their eyes

Empathy and Emotions:

Empathy played an important role. People with higher levels of empathy demonstrated better accuracy in understanding the emotions behind expressions. This proves that empathetic individuals are more attuned to emotional cues, with a better understanding of emotionally significant stimuli. Read this also 5 ways dogs say ‘thank you’ to humans

“Empathetic people paid more attention to emotional information, which is likely reflected in our results – their brain responses to the algorithm to detect differences between categories were also clearer,” MiaMaria Kujala told PsyPost.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions you may have about a medical condition.