Overview
- Researchers at the University of Vienna published results in iScience that were reported Tuesday after training 14 family dogs to stay still in an fMRI scanner and view photos of human faces.
- Images of smiling faces produced increased activity in a right‑hemisphere network that included the nucleus caudatus, a brain region linked to reward and positive expectation.
- The dogs clearly separated positive from negative facial expressions, but the study found only limited ability to tell some negative emotions such as anger, fear and sadness apart.
- The sample was mostly family pets and many were Border Collies, so the authors warned the findings may not apply to stray, less‑socialized, or differently bred dogs.
- The team emphasized that real interactions rely on smell, posture and voice as well as faces, and they called for follow‑up studies that use diverse dogs and multimodal, real‑world cues.