Like Humans, Dogs Process Intonation & Word Meaning In Separate Brain Regions

"Our findings suggest that dogs, similarly to humans, process emotional prosodic cues in spoken words at lower levels (subcortical and near-primary cortical regions, reflected in both short-term and long-term adaptation effects) and lexical information at higher levels (near-primary and secondary auditory cortical regions, reflected in long-term adaptation effects) of the auditory processing hierarchy. Prosody processing was thus subcortically independent of lexical cues, prosody influenced lexical processing in a near-primary cortical region and, finally, lexical processing was independent of prosodic cues in a secondary auditory cortical region."

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