Action observation reveals a network with divergent temporal and parietal cortex engagement in dogs compared with humans
Magdalena Boch, Sabrina Karl, Isabella C Wagner, Lukas L Lengersdorff, Ludwig Huber, Claus Lamm · 2024
Read Action observation reveals a network with divergent temporal and parietal cortex engagement in dogs compared with humans by Magdalena Boch, Sabrina Karl, Isabella C Wagner, Lukas L Lengersdorff, Ludwig Huber, Claus Lamm (2024) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12315739.txt.
Description
Magdalena Boch and five co-authors compare how dog and human brains respond to watching actions, in a 2024 study. Watching others act is a pillar of social understanding. Primates use a front-to-back brain network for it, tied to imitation skill. Dogs also read actions and imitate well, but their action network was unexplored.
The team scanned 28 dogs and 40 humans with functional MRI while they watched goal-directed and simple actions. Both species engaged body-sensing and temporal areas, and both responded in line with their imitation abilities. Special marker tasks found matching agent-responsive patches in each network. But connectivity and activation showed far less parietal involvement in dogs. The authors read this as convergent evolution: similar social lives built similar systems, while different brain expansion histories left different emphases.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Magdalena Boch, Sabrina Karl, Isabella C Wagner, Lukas L Lengersdorff, Ludwig Huber, Claus Lamm |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2024 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 106 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |