Science Alert explains the allure of the puppy-dog eyes with Chinese research demonstrating brainwaves suddenly syncing up between humans and dogs when they look into each other’s eyes:
The researchers measured brain activity in humans and dogs by placing electrodes on the skull. For the trial, 10 young beagles were matched with unknown humans, and the pairs got to know each other over the course of five days.
In the experiments, the human-dog pairs engaged in nonverbal communication, such as mutual gazing or a good old pat. As a control, the human and dog also stayed in the same room and did not interact.
“We observed that inter-brain correlations in frontal and parietal regions dramatically increased… during mutual gaze,” the authors of the study write, led by biologist Wei Ren from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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In the current study, when humans were asked to pet the dogs and gaze into their eyes, the inter-brain activity between the two was even more connected than when they were merely patting or merely gazing at the dogs.
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Plugging in the data from each human-dog interaction, the team found it was the human brains that were initiating the coupled neural activity. Over the course of the study, inter-brain synchronization between the human-dog pairs grew, which suggests the two were bonding.
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You can read more of the study here, in Advanced Science.