Cuaya Laura V, Hernández-Pérez Raúl, Concha Luis
Instituto de Neurobiología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Querétaro, México.
PLoS One. 2016 Mar 2;11(3):e0149431. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149431. eCollection 2016.
Dogs have a rich social relationship with humans. One fundamental aspect of it is how dogs pay close attention to human faces in order to guide their behavior, for example, by recognizing their owner and his/her emotional state using visual cues. It is well known that humans have specific brain regions for the processing of other human faces, yet it is unclear how dogs' brains process human faces. For this reason, our study focuses on describing the brain correlates of perception of human faces in dogs using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We trained seven domestic dogs to remain awake, still and unrestrained inside an MRI scanner. We used a visual stimulation paradigm with block design to compare activity elicited by human faces against everyday objects. Brain activity related to the perception of faces changed significantly in several brain regions, but mainly in the bilateral temporal cortex. The opposite contrast (i.e., everyday objects against human faces) showed no significant brain activity change. The temporal cortex is part of the ventral visual pathway, and our results are consistent with reports in other species like primates and sheep, that suggest a high degree of evolutionary conservation of this pathway for face processing. This study introduces the temporal cortex as candidate to process human faces, a pillar of social cognition in dogs.
狗与人类有着丰富的社会关系。其中一个基本方面是狗如何密切关注人类的面部表情以指导它们的行为，例如，通过视觉线索识别它们的主人及其情绪状态。众所周知，人类有特定的脑区来处理其他人的面部表情，但目前尚不清楚狗的大脑是如何处理人类面部表情的。因此，我们的研究重点是使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）来描述狗对人类面部表情感知的大脑关联。我们训练了七只家养狗在MRI扫描仪内保持清醒、静止且不受约束。我们使用带有组块设计的视觉刺激范式，将人类面部引发的活动与日常物品引发的活动进行比较。与面部感知相关的大脑活动在几个脑区有显著变化，但主要在双侧颞叶皮质。相反的对比（即日常物品与人类面部）则没有显示出显著的大脑活动变化。颞叶皮质是腹侧视觉通路的一部分，我们的结果与灵长类动物和绵羊等其他物种的报告一致，这些报告表明该通路在处理面部方面具有高度的进化保守性。这项研究将颞叶皮质作为处理人类面部表情的候选区域引入，而人类面部表情是狗社会认知的一个支柱。
