A dog is the closest living creature to a person, which not only serves, obeying instinct, but understands and sympathizes.
It has been proven that a dog can lift a person's mood. As part of new research, scientists decided to find out what reaction occurs in a dog's brain when communicating with a person.
The corresponding studies were conducted by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Normal University together with their colleagues from the UK.
Scientists have come to the conclusion that brain activity is synchronized when a person communicates with a dog.
The results were published in the scientific journal Advanced Science.
Research by scientists
The researchers invited 19 dog owners to take part in the experiment.
The research was conducted over five days. According to the scenario, the person was the leader.
What was found out?
Nine of the 19 dogs were found to have genetic mutations that caused symptoms of social disability (similar to autism in humans).
These dogs lost synchrony when interacting with humans and were generally less attentive.
In this case, the connection was restored after a single dose of a special semi-synthetic psychoactive substance – LSD.
In other cases, synchronization of the dog's brain activity was caused by eye contact and stroking.
Brain activity was observed both in humans during interaction with dogs and in dogs during contact with humans.
The "interlocutors" only had to look at each other attentively. In this case, the mutual reaction was observed in the frontal lobe.
If a person petted a dog, then similar processes took place in the parietal lobe, which in both cases is associated with concentration of attention.
