A dog’s dilemma: Do canines prefer praise or food?
A new study suggests that given the choice, many dogs prefer praise from their owners over food. The study is one of the first to combine brain-imaging data with behavioral experiments to explore canine reward preferences.
What happens in the Lab doesn't have to stay in the Lab!
Mans best friend: Dogs process faces in specialized brain area
The study involved dogs viewing both static images and video images on a screen while undergoing fMRI. It was a particularly challenging experiment since dogs do not normally interact with two-dimensional images, and they had to undergo training to learn to pay attention to the screen.
Image credit goes to: Photo by Gregory Berns, Emory University
Ever feel like your pet knows what you look like? While historically animals are depicted as, well slow… new research is proving otherwise. To pet owners this might not be big news, but scientists found that dogs have a specialized region in their brains for processing faces. The research provides the first evidence for a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs.
What happens in the Lab doesn't have to stay in the Lab!
Study finds pet owners reluctant to face up to their cats’ kill count
More awesomeness like this can be found at theoatmeal.com
Cats are increasingly earning themselves a reputation as wildlife killers with estimates of animals killed every year by domestic cats in the UK numbering into the millions. This new study on the attitudes of cat owners suggests that proposals to keep cats indoors in order to preserve wildlife would not be well received.
What happens in the Lab doesn't have to stay in the Lab!
The Neurobiological Basis of a Human-Pet Relationship
My wife adores our cats. Now, I’m not a cat person, but my wife loves them. In fact if we had children and someone held a gun to her head and said choose between the kid or the cats, there would likely be an uncomfortable amount of time before a response. The big question is, why do we love animals like we do our own children? Well a small study helps try to answer this complex question by investigating differences in how important brain structures are activated when women view images of their children compared to images of their own dogs.
