According to LiveScience scientists found that dogs and humans have the same areas in the brain that are responsible for understanding and interpreting both canine and human sounds.
Scientists found that dogs and humans have the same “voice areas” in their brains, and these areas are responsible for understanding and interpreting both canine and human sounds.
Attila Andics, of MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, noted that the presence of voice areas in both dog and human brains suggests this region existed in an ancestor of the two species that lived as long ago as 100 million years ago.
“The way dogs and humans process emotionally loaded sounds is very similar. It is really not probable that the two species [dogs and humans] evolved these very similar brain mechanisms independently,” commented Andics.
A lot of research has looked into the strong social bond between people and dogs, but scientists still know very little about the brain mechanism behind this alliance, he said.
The scientists found that the dogs reacted most strongly to the sounds produced by dogs, whereas the humans reacted most strongly to the sounds produced by humans. But both the dogs and humans also responded to the emotions in each other’s sounds.