Scientists Prove Dogs Really Do Understand What We Say to Them

A team of scientists has confirmed what any pet owner would already confidently tell you: that dogs can understand both vocabulary and the intonation of human voices.

To carry out the study, 13 dogs were trained to lie motionless in an MRI scanner awake and unrestrained.

The results from the dogs’ brain activity demonstrated the animals process vocabulary, recognising distinctive words, regardless of intonation. While the recordings played, researchers paid attention to the dogs’ brain regions, to see if the dogs were able to differentiate between not only the meaningful and meaningless words, but between praising and non-praising tones. A study published in the journal Science showed that their brains process words with the left hemisphere and use the right hemisphere to process intonation — just like humans.

Dogs process words and tone with brain regions similar to humans – and it appears they can tell when you’re praising them, but don’t really mean it. Once the dogs were all set up, the researchers would read them a series of words, some of which were “marked” with a positive or negative association, and some of which were unmarked, or neutral. Also like humans, the researchers found that dogs process intonation separately from vocabulary, in auditory regions in the right hemisphere of the brain. Intonation can convey so much information, which forms the basis of our verbal communication alongside the words that we use.

Ever feel like you’re dog just *gets* you? They listened to their trainer’s speech and at the same time the research team measured their brain activity.

The researchers said it’s unlikely that human selection of dogs during their domestication, which occurred at least 15,000 years ago, could have led to this sort of brain function; instead, they say, it’s probably far more ancient. Dogs, too, use the left side of their brain to process vocabulary, and recognize each word as distinct.

In surroundings with many spoken words such as a family home, understanding of word meanings can develop even in the brains of animals unable to speak, the study shows.

Here’s how Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, went about answering the age-old question about man’s best friend. Now, there is is scientific proof our pooches can actually understand meaning behind human language. And it suggests that they at least associate familiar “praise” words with positive outcomes. “Dogs can also tell apart word meaning and word intonation”.