Trial reportPloS one2022
Effects of contact with a dog on prefrontal brain activity: A controlled trial.
Trial report in PloS one, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Beyond the Leash: Exploring the Public Health Dimension of Facility Dog Handler Experiences in Military Graduate Education.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Preliminary Evidence on Psychophysiological and Emotional Responses to Different Types of Human-Calf Interaction in Healthy Adults.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Effects of a Dog-Assisted Animal-Assisted Therapy on Behavioural Functioning in Preschool and Primary School Children: A Randomised Controlled Study.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Effects of human-dog interactions on brain activation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The protective role of companion animal ownership in cognitive aging: current status of the literature.GeroScience · 2026Review
- Transfer effects of animal-assisted therapy on socioemotional skills in adult inpatient rehabilitation after acquired brain injury: a randomized controlled trial.Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences · 2026Article
- Specific Neural Mechanisms Underlying Humans' Processing of Information Related to Companion Animals: A Comparison with Domestic Animals and Objects.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- One Health, Two Species: Linking Domestication to Cognitive Aging in Dogs and Humans.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Longitudinal relationships between pet ownership and cognitive functioning in later adulthood across pet types and individuals' ages.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Observation of human-animal interaction for research (OHAIRE) behavior coding in a randomized control trial of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a canine-assisted intervention.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- Psychophysiological and emotional effects of human-Dog interactions by activity type: An electroencephalogram study.PloS one · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThere is a broad range of known effects of animal contact on human mental and physical health. Neurological correlates of human interaction with animals have been sparsely investigated. We investigated changes in frontal brain activity in the presence of and during contact with a dog.
methodsTwenty-one healthy individuals each participated in six sessions. In three sessions, participants had contact with a dog, and in three control sessions they interacted with a plush animal. Each session had five two-minute phases with increasing intensity of contact to the dog or plush animal from the first to the fourth phase. We measured oxygenated, deoxygenated, and total hemoglobin and oxygen saturation of the blood in the frontal lobe/frontopolar area with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (SenSmart Model X-100) to assess brain activity.
findingsIn both conditions, the concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin increased significantly from the first to the fourth phase by 2.78 μmol/l (CI = 2.03-3.53, p < .001). Oxygenated hemoglobin concentration was 0.80 μmol/l higher in the dog condition compared to in the control condition (CI = 0.27-1.33, p = .004). Deoxygenated-hemoglobin concentration, total hemoglobin concentration, and oxygen saturation showed similar patterns.
conclusionPrefrontal brain activation in healthy subjects increased with the rise in interaction closeness with a dog or a plush animal. Moreover, interaction with a dog stimulated more brain activity compared to the control condition, suggesting that interactions with a dog can activate stronger attentional processes and elicit more emotional arousal than interacting with a nonliving stimulus.
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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.