Differences in dogs' event related potentials in response to human and dog vocal stimuli: A non-invasive study

Recent advances in the field of canine neuro-cognition allow for the non-invasive research of brain mechanisms in family dogs. Considering the striking similarities between dog's and human (infant)'s socio-cognition at the behavioural level, both similarities and differences in neural background can be of particular relevance. The current study investigates brain responses of N=17 family dogs to human and conspecific emotional vocalisations using a fully non-invasive ERP paradigm. We found that similarly to humans, dogs show a differential ERP response depending on the species of the caller demonstrated by a more positive ERP response to human vocalisations compared to dog vocalisations in a time-window between 250-650 ms after stimulus onset. A later time-window between 800-900 ms also revealed a valence sensitive ERP response in interaction with the species of the caller. Our results are the first ERP evidence to show the species sensitivity of vocal neural processing in dogs along with indications of valence sensitive processes in later post-stimulus time-periods.