Here’s A Video To Explain How Dogs Process And Understand Our Speech

The way that most of us interact with our dogs is probably closer to a parent/child relationship than a pet/owner relationship and for good reason, too; dogs are incredible and make our lives so much better. A new study has gone as far as to explain that our interactions with dogs might work a lot closer to our interactions with other people because they actually do kind of understand us.

That means that all of those weird nicknames that we give them and those times that we say silly, dumb things to them in a higher pitched voice probably has your dog a lot more confused than we thought before. This video shows how the research that led to this discovery went down. Basically, it involves a dog inside of a CAT scan where their brain activity was monitored while humans spoke to them. Their brains reacted to not only intonation but also the words in much the same way that our own brains comprehend language, meaning that these dogs were picking up what they were laying down.

The left hemisphere of their brain processes the meaning of the words that we tell them, while the right analyzes the intonation, emotion, and delivery of these words. Praising your dog activates the reward center of their brain, but only if the word and the intonation line up, which means those times when you are tired and you mutter “good boy” it probably doesn’t have the intended impact.

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