MRI scans show dogs can understand human—sort of

MRI scans are good for more than just understanding human brains. They can also help us understand the brains of our furry friends and how they might be similar or different to us.

Researchers in Hungary were able to get 13 dogs to sit perfectly still in an MRI machine while they measured their brains’ responses to human language and voice. It’s one of the first-ever studies to perform an MRI on awake animals, according to a researcher involved.

And they found that dogs seem to understand the meaning of human words, not just the tone in which they are said.

Their brains respond to speech very similarly to humans’, according to one of the researchers. The left side of their brain processes language—it picks up the meaning of the words themselves. But the right side of the brain is the part doing the listening to the tone of voice.

The dogs will only understand praise as a reward if both the meaning of the word and the intonation of the word is positive—they won’t get the same pleasure activation if someone just says something negative in a pleasant manner.

Check out NPR to see how this could change scientists’ understanding of the evolution of the human brain in relation to language.