Dogs are bilingual!Scientists have discovered that it can detect changes in speech between languages.

(Getty Images)

Budapest, Hungary (StudyFinds.org) – Can your dog understand the difference between English and Spanish? The answer is probably yes! New research reveals that the dog’s brain can detect different speech patterns between familiar and unfamiliar languages.

Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary say this is the first time scientists have shown that a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages.

“A few years ago, I moved from Mexico to Hungary and participated in the neuroethics of the Communication Laboratory of the Faculty of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University as a postdoctoral fellow. My dog-kun came with me. Previously. I only spoke to him in Spanish, so I wondered if Kun noticed the people of Budapest. Spoke another language, Hungarian, “said Laura Kuaya, the lead author of the study. Media release..

“We know that people are aware of the difference, even in human infants before they speak verbally. But dogs may not care. After all, which particular language is It never gets the dog’s attention to what it sounds like. I designed a brain imaging test to find this. “

What’s happening in the dog’s brain?

The researchers performed brain scans of Kun and 17 other dogs, playing audio excerpts from “Prince of the Stars” in both Spanish and Hungarian. Each dog heard one of the languages ​​in the voice of its owner, allowing scientists to completely compare “very familiar” languages ​​with foreign languages.

The team also played a scrambled version of the passages in these books to test if the dog could understand the difference from the actual books. Voice and non-voice..

When the team compared the response of each dog to speech and non-speech, they Primary auditory cortex Of the brain. These patterns appeared regardless of the language the dog heard. However, the authors of the study add that the dog’s brain does not appear to have a preference for hearing spoken or non-spoken sounds.

“The dog’s brain, Like the human brain, You can distinguish between voice and non-voice. However, the underlying mechanism of this speech detection capability may differ from human speech sensitivity. The human brain is specially tuned to voice, while the dog’s brain may simply detect the naturalness of sound, “explains research co-author Raúl Hernández-Pérez.

Older dogs may be more bilingual than puppies

Regarding hearing Different languages, The author of the study discovered another brain region-the secondary auditory cortex- You can see the difference Between Spanish and Hungarian. In addition, the older the dog in the experiment, the better it was able to distinguish between the two languages.

“Each language is characterized by different auditory regularities. Our findings show that in life with humans, dogs understand the auditory regularities of the language they are exposed to. Suggests, “says Hernández-Pérez.

“This study shows for the first time that the non-human brain can distinguish between two languages. It’s exciting because it reveals that the ability to learn about language regularity is not the only human being. Still, this ability. I don’t know if is a dog specialty or common among non-human species. Indeed, during the tens of thousands of years that dogs have lived with humans, their brains have changed and their brains have changed. May have changed Better language listenerHowever, this is not always the case. Future research will need to find this, “concludes senior author Attila Andics.

Team findings will be displayed in the journal NeuroImage..

Dogs are bilingual!Scientists have discovered that it can detect changes in speech between languages.

Source link Dogs are bilingual!Scientists have discovered that it can detect changes in speech between languages.

The post Dogs are bilingual!Scientists have discovered that it can detect changes in speech between languages. appeared first on Illinois News Today.