Awake fMRI reveals a specialized region in dog temporal cortex for face processing.

ABSTRACT: Recent behavioral evidence suggests that dogs, like humans and monkeys, are capable of visual face recognition. But do dogs also exhibit specialized cortical face regions similar to humans and monkeys? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in six dogs trained to remain motionless during scanning without restraint or sedation, we found a region in the canine temporal lobe that responded significantly more to movies of human faces than to movies of everyday objects. Next, using a new stimulus set to investigate face selectivity in this predefined candidate dog face area, we found that this region responded similarly to images of human faces and dog faces, yet significantly more to both human and dog faces than to images of objects. Such face selectivity was not found in dog prim

SUBMITTER: Dilks DD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4540004 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature