Cruelty Free International, London, UK.
People for Animals, Chennai, India.
J Med Ethics. 2018 Jan;44(1):47-52. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2016-103630. Epub 2017 Jul 24.
Functional MRI (fMRI) of fully awake and unrestrained dog 'volunteers' has been proven an effective tool to understand the neural circuitry and functioning of the canine brain. Although every dog owner would vouch that dogs are perceptive, cognitive, intuitive and capable of positive emotions/empathy, as indeed substantiated by ethological studies for some time, neurological investigations now corroborate this. These studies show that there exists a striking similarity between dogs and humans in the functioning of the caudate nucleus (associated with pleasure and emotion), and dogs experience positive emotions, empathic-like responses and demonstrate human bonding which, some scientists claim, may be at least comparable with human children. There exists an area analogous to the 'voice area' in the canine brain, enabling dogs to comprehend and respond to emotional cues/valence in human voices, and evidence of a region in the temporal cortex of dogs involved in the processing of faces, as also observed in humans and monkeys. We therefore contend that using dogs in invasive and/or harmful research, and toxicity testing, cannot be ethically justifiable.
对完全清醒且不受约束的犬“志愿者”进行功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）已被证明是一种有效的工具，可以了解犬类大脑的神经回路和功能。尽管每个狗主人都会说狗是有感知力、有认知力、有直觉的，能够感受到积极的情绪/同理心，这一点确实也被一段时间以来的行为学研究证实了，神经学研究现在也证实了这一点。这些研究表明，在尾状核（与愉悦和情感有关）的功能方面，狗和人类之间存在惊人的相似之处，狗会体验到积极的情绪、类似同理心的反应，并表现出人类的亲密关系，一些科学家声称，这种关系至少可以与人类儿童相媲美。在犬类大脑中存在一个类似于“声音区域”的区域，使狗能够理解和响应人类声音中的情绪线索/变化，并且在颞叶皮层中也发现了一个区域，该区域涉及到对人脸的处理，这在人类和猴子中也观察到了。因此，我们认为在侵入性和/或有害的研究以及毒性测试中使用狗是不道德的。
