A new study found that dogs trained with the Do as I Do method can imitate human actions from two-dimensional video projections. Dogs’ ability to process and replicate actions observed in 2D video projections aligns with their everyday observational perspective with humans.
Fugazza C., Higaki F. (2024) Exploring the use of projected videos to test action matching from different perspectives in dogs. Biologia Futura DOI 10.1007/s42977-024-00222-6
A new study found that dogs trained with the Do as I Do method can imitate human actions from two-dimensional video projections. Dogs’ ability to process and replicate actions observed in 2D video projections aligns with their everyday observational perspective with humans.
Fugazza C., Higaki F. (2024) Exploring the use of projected videos to test action matching from different perspectives in dogs. Biologia Futura DOI 10.1007/s42977-024-00222-6
A new study found that dogs trained with the Do as I Do method can imitate human actions from two-dimensional video projections. Dogs’ ability to process and replicate actions observed in 2D video projections aligns with their everyday observational perspective with humans.
Fugazza C., Higaki F. (2024) Exploring the use of projected videos to test action matching from different perspectives in dogs. Biologia Futura DOI 10.1007/s42977-024-00222-6
Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary find a human N400-like semantic mismatch effect in dogs’ ERPs to objects primed with matching or mismatching object words, revealing that object words can evoke mental representations of the referred objects in dogs. The referential understanding of object words is thus not a distinctive feature of the human language faculty. (ez az eTOC blurb) See more: Boros, Magyari et al. (2024) Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.029
Dogs provide new insights into aging and cognition.
The quest to understand intelligence and unravel the workings of the mind has always been considered the holy grail of natural sciences. Animals can provide valuable insights into the origins and organisation of both mind and intellect. In their latest study, researchers at the Department of Ethology at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University discovered that dogs may possess a key component of intelligence known as the "g factor".
Importantly, this factor shares many characteristics with its human counterpart, including its ageing patterns. These findings could bring us closer to understanding how dog (and human) cognition is organised, and how cognitive decline progresses with age.
Bognár, Z., Turcsán, B., Faragó, T. et al. Age-related effects on a hierarchical structure of canine cognition. GeroScience (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-024-01123-1
Dogs’ food preferences are mirrored in their brain activity, particularly within their caudate nuclei -a brain region associated with reward processing, a new study combining behavioural and neuroimaging data by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University and Symrise Pet Food finds. This work has been published in Scientific Reports: Cuaya, L.V., Hernández-Pérez, R., Andics, A. et al. Representation of rewards differing in their hedonic valence in the caudate nucleus correlates with the performance in a problem-solving task in dogs (Canis familiaris). Sci Rep 13, 14353 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40539-1
Dog brains show greater sensitivity to dog-directed speech than to adult-directed speech, especially if spoken by women, according to a study entitled ‘Dog brains are tuned to female’s dog-directed speech’ published recently in Communications Biology. Exciting similarities between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with exaggerated prosody were revealed by Hungarian researchers at the Research Centre for Natural Sciences, the Eötvös Loránd University and the Eötvös Loránd Research Network. Gergely, A., Gábor, A., Gácsi, M. et al. Dog brains are sensitive to infant- and dog-directed prosody. Commun Biol 6, 859 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05217-y
The study aimed to investigate dogs' ability to understand verbal commands, despite limited evidence of such capacity. Using a two-choice paradigm with familiar objects, dogs generally performed above chance in fetching and looking at named objects, suggesting a rudimentary ability for object-label learning, albeit inconsistently expressed, possibly resembling early stages of word learning in humans rather than rapid mapping seen in exceptional dogs. Kőszegi, H., Fugazza, C., Magyari, L. et al. Investigating responses to object-labels in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris). Sci Rep 13, 3150 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30201-1
The Prominent Role of Vocal-like Sounds in the Dog and Human Brain.
Breeds that are closely genetically related to wolves are more likely to respond with howling and show more stress when exposed to wolf howling compared to breeds that are genetically further removed from their wild relatives, but this genetic difference is only observed in older individuals, according to a new study published in Communications Biology by researchers from the Ethology Department at ELTE University (DOI: 10.1038/s42003-023-04450-9).
In their study published in Scientific Reports (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-26503-5), researchers from the Ethology Department at ELTE University concluded that dogs show their owners the location of the desired reward, while piglets do not. This may indicate that piglets lack the necessary traits for this type of communication.
The first part of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series presents the design of ethological studies. We highly recommend it for biology students and future researchers. Featuring interviews with Dr. Péter Pongrácz and Márta Gácsi. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).
The second part of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series presents behavioral testing, data analysis, and scientific publication. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).
The third part of the "Behavioral Biology for You" series introduces the Senior Family Dog Program. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).
The fourth part of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series introduces the Alpha Generation Lab. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).
The fifth part of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series introduces the Neuroethology Research Group. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).
In Episode 6 of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series, the Companion Animals Research Group is introduced. Created by: Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).
Film about dog-wolf comparisons by the Ethology Department at ELTE University (2005).
Director: Attila Dávid Molnár, Editor: Enikő Kubinyi.
Dogs are capable of recognizing their owners based on their voice, using pitch and roughness as cues. The study was conducted by researchers from the Ethology Department of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and the results were published in the journal Animal Cognition (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-022-01601-z).
Researchers from the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) Faculty of Science have found in their latest brain imaging study that the dog's brain perceives human speech and shows different patterns when exposed to a familiar language versus an unfamiliar language. This is the first evidence in the world that a non-human brain can distinguish between two languages (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118811).
Researchers from the Ethology Department at ELTE (Eötvös Loránd University) (http://etologia.elte.hu/hu/home/) have demonstrated that dogs, similar to infants, discover word boundaries. The study was published in the journal Current Biology (https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)01406-8).
In the brains of dogs, similar to those of children, attachment is associated with reward responses in the brain. This research revealing intriguing similarities was published by researchers from the ELTE Faculty of Science, Department of Ethology, and the ELKH Research Centre for Natural Sciences in the scientific journal NeuroImage. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811921007539
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