ArticleScientific reports2020
Exploring the dog-human relationship by combining fMRI, eye-tracking and behavioural measures.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 84 citations in OpenAlex.
- On the (limited) use of touchscreen-based behavioural and cognitive research with dogs: potential causes and future directions.Animal cognition · 2026Pooled it
- The epigenetic archaeology of human-dog companionship.Epigenetics · 2026Review
- Dog brain representations of human facial expressions: Encoding happiness and differentiating specific negative expressions.iScience · 2026Article
- Human-analogue age-related dynamics of dog-human attachment.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Happy and angry human pictures differentially affect dogs' postural stability.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The Complexity of Communication in Mammals: From Social and Emotional Mechanisms to Human Influence and Multimodal Applications.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- An overview of the benefits of animal-assisted interventions in medical and therapeutic contexts for human health: cognitive mechanisms, sensory perception and welfare considerations.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Review
- Research Methods for the Analysis of Visual Emotion Cues in Animals: A Workshop Report.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- After all, how valuable is the dog model for examining human socio-cognitive abilities?Biologia futura · 2025Review
- Continuous automated analysis of facial dynamics of brachycephalic and normocephalic dogs in different contexts.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- Behavioral and emotional co-modulation during dog-owner interaction measured by heart rate variability and activity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Mechanisms of Social Attachment Between Children and Pet Dogs.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- Domestic dogs as a comparative model for social neuroscience: Advances and challenges.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Functional mapping of the somatosensory cortex using noninvasive fMRI and touch in awake dogs.Brain structure & function · 2024Article
- How to Measure Human-Dog Interaction in Dog Assisted Interventions? A Scoping Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Perception of animate motion in dogs.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Automation in canine science: enhancing human capabilities and overcoming adoption barriers.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2024Article
- Digitally-enhanced dog behavioral testing.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- 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).Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Comparative neurogenetics of dog behavior complements efforts towards human neuropsychiatric genetics.Human genetics · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Behavioural studies revealed that the dog-human relationship resembles the human mother-child bond, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we report the results of a multi-method approach combining fMRI (N = 17), eye-tracking (N = 15), and behavioural preference tests (N = 24) to explore the engagement of an attachment-like system in dogs seeing human faces. We presented morph videos of the caregiver, a familiar person, and a stranger showing either happy or angry facial expressions. Regardless of emotion, viewing the caregiver activated brain regions associated with emotion and attachment processing in humans. In contrast, the stranger elicited activation mainly in brain regions related to visual and motor processing, and the familiar person relatively weak activations overall. While the majority of happy stimuli led to increased activation of the caudate nucleus associated with reward processing, angry stimuli led to activations in limbic regions. Both the eye-tracking and preference test data supported the superior role of the caregiver's face and were in line with the findings from the fMRI experiment. While preliminary, these findings indicate that cutting across different levels, from brain to behaviour, can provide novel and converging insights into the engagement of the putative attachment system when dogs interact with humans.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.