Abstract
Simple SummaryWe showed dogs and humans live-action stimuli (actors and objects) and videos of the same stimuli during fMRI to measure the equivalency of live and two-dimensional stimuli in the dog’s brain. We found that video stimuli were effective in defining face and object regions. However, the human fusiform face area and posterior superior temporal sulcus, and the analogous area in the dog brain, appeared to respond preferentially to live stimuli. In object regions, there was not a significantly different response between live and video stimuli.Previous research to localize face areas in dogs’ brains has generally relied on static images or videos. However, most dogs do not naturally engage with two-dimensional images, raising the question of whether dogs perceive such images as representations of real faces and objects. To measure the equivalency of live and two-dimensional stimuli in the dog’s brain, during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we presented dogs and humans with live-action stimuli (actors and objects) as well as videos of the same actors and objects. The dogs (n = 7) and humans (n = 5) were presented with 20 s blocks of faces and objects in random order. In dogs, we found significant areas of increased activation in the putative dog face area, and in humans, we found significant areas of increased activation in the fusiform face area to both live and video stimuli. In both dogs and humans, we found areas of significant activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (ectosylvian fissure in dogs) and the lateral occipital complex (entolateral gyrus in dogs) to both live and video stimuli. Of these regions of interest, only the area along the ectosylvian fissure in dogs showed significantly more activation to live faces than to video faces, whereas, in humans, both the fusiform face area and posterior superior temporal sulcus responded significantly more to live conditions than video conditions. However, using the video conditions alone, we were able to localize all regions of interest in both dogs and humans. Therefore, videos can be used to localize these regions of interest, though live conditions may be more salient.
Highlights
Introduction iationsPrevious imaging studies that have localized regions of the brain in both humans and canines have generally relied upon video and 2D image stimuli [1,2,3,4,5]
The use of video images is largely a matter of convenience for the experimenter, and it may not make much difference for human neuroimaging studies, very little is known about how dogs perceive 2D images and whether they are perceived as referents for their realworld counterparts
The question of whether 2D images serve as valid stimuli depends on whether they have ecological validity for the subject
Summary
Previous imaging studies that have localized regions of the brain in both humans and canines have generally relied upon video and 2D image stimuli [1,2,3,4,5]. The use of video images is largely a matter of convenience for the experimenter, and it may not make much difference for human neuroimaging studies, very little is known about how dogs perceive 2D images and whether they are perceived as referents for their realworld counterparts. Previous studies have suggested dogs can abstract from iconic representations to their real-world counterparts, though this was not from images shown on a screen [6]. Other studies suggest that dogs’ brains show no significant difference between processing live
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