Dogs can detect emotion in human voices, study shows - DC News
FOX 5 DC WTTG  Dogs can detect emotion in human voices, study
shows  Posted: Updated:  Think your dog can tell when you're
feeling sad or happy? You may be right.  Dogs are sensitive to
cues of emotion in human voices, according to a new study from
Current Biology. Researchers suspect the area of the brain
responsible for voice and sounds in both dogs and humans evolved
at the same time, 100 million years ago, when the two species
shared common ancestors.  "Dogs and humans share a similar
social environment," Attila Andics, of MTA-ELTE Comparative
Ethology Research Group in Hungary, said in a press release.
"Our findings suggest that they also use similar brain
mechanisms to process social information. This may support the
successfulness of vocal communication between the two species."
For their study, researchers trained 11 dogs to sit still in a
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. The
researchers than analyzed the brain activi