NEWSWEEK – Gazing into your furry friend’s eyes and giving it pets can cause your brain to synchronize with theirs, scientists have discovered.
This kind of synchronization of brain waves, known as interbrain activity coupling, has been observed previously in human-human interactions and between members of other species.
But it has now been seen in human-dog pairs, according to a new paper in the journal Advanced Science.
This is the first time that an ability to synchronize brain activity was seen between two individuals of different species.
The paper’s authors wrote: “This study is the first to report and characterize interbrain activity coupling during cross-species interactions. Our results show that the strength, direction, and attention-associated brain regions of the interbrain activity coupling during human-dog interactions are similar to those during human-human interactions.”
Dogs have been man’s best friend for over 30,000 years, and their domestication is believed to have happened when certain wolves began to interact with human hunter-gatherer societies. As wolves were domesticated and became dogs, they became more docile, trainable and social and developed a higher tolerance for human presence and attention.
“Dogs have evolved to read, understand and respond to a wide range of human emotional states and communicative signals through behaviors, facial expressions, and even vocal tones, offering an extraordinary level of active companionship that is not often seen in other domesticated or companion animals, such as cats,” the authors wrote.
“However, the neural mechanisms underlying the distinctive and effective communication between humans and dogs are largely unknown,” they said …
