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Annotated Bibliography

In What Ways Do Dogs Relate to or Empathize with Their Owners Emotions and What is The
Process of Their Reactions?

Lea Thompson
Professor Malcolm Campbell
English 1103
10/16/16

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Annotated Bibliography
Berns, Gregory. Dogs Are People, Too. Www.nytimes.com. N.p., 5 Oct. 2013. Web.17 Oct.
2016.
The New York Times popular website featured an article focusing on the perplexing
question of how a dogs brain works as compared to how a humans brain works. Gregory
Berns, neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry, became increasingly curious as to what
makes for a strong dog-human relationship, and decided to pursue his interests by
developing an experiment to test first on his own dog. Berns experiment depended upon
an MRI scanner to measure his dog Callies brain response to two hand signals. First,
Berns used a hand signal that signified a treat was being offered up, and another one that
signified the opposite. From the results gathered from Callie and a dozen other MRI
certified dogs, Berns and his colleagues noticed striking similarity between dogs and
humans in both structure and function of a specific region of the brain, the caudate
nucleus. In humans, the caudate nucleus deciphers things we enjoy, like love, food and
money. The caudate nucleus is located between the brainstem and the cortex and
sometimes caudate activation is so consistent that it can predict which food, music and
beauty we prefer. For dogs, the caudate nucleus increased in response to hand signals,
indicating food or a treat, and was also activated by the scent of their owners or familiar
humans. In preliminary tests, the caudate nucleus reacted to the return of an owner who
left momentarily. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology which may indicate that
canines do in fact, have emotions. This means that the ability to experience emotions like
love and attachment that a dog has is similar to, or on the same level as that of a human
child. The author of this article, Gregory Berns, seems very credible, experienced and

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interested in his topic. Berns reassured the audience that these experiments are only just
the beginning of his research into this subject, which indicates that this is an active topic
in science and more answers will eventually be discovered. The comparison Berns uses
between a dogs caudate nucleus and a humans caudate nucleus made it easier to
comprehend and relate to. This article could be very useful in beginning to uncover the
truth about canines emotional capability, and the author, Gregory Berns, promises to
answer even more questions in the near future.
Coren, Stanley. Which Emotions Do Dogs Actually Experience? Modern Dog Magazine. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.
The website Modern Dog Magazine features many articles focused on the mental,
physical, and emotional aspects of our treasured fluffy companions. From articles
advising owners what is safe to feed their pups, to articles providing owners with warning
signs to watch out for when dealing with a sick dog, Modern Dog Magazine has it all.
The article I choose to focus on relates specifically to dogs emotions and the way that
science and technology has developed over the years and uncovered new answers. During
the 1500s, French philosopher and scientist, Ren Descartes, suggested that animals (like
dogs) function simply like a type of machine. Later, Nicholas de Malebranch, another
French philosopher, expanded upon Descartes ideas and said that animals eat without
pleasure, cry without pain, act without knowing it: they desire nothing, fear nothing,
know nothing. Many statements have been made against both Descartes and
Malebranchs ideas and philosophies by people who recognize what appears to be
emotion in their canines when they are challenged or faced with aggression. To these
statements, many classical scientists replied by saying that dogs simply act upon impulse

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and do not feel. However, science has come a long way since then and it has since been
discovered that canines possess all the same brain structures and hormones as humans
and even undergo the same chemical changes that humans do when experiencing certain
emotions. With that said, Coren then reminds the audience that these studies dont
necessarily prove that the emotional ranges of dogs and humans are equivalent. In recent
research, scientists have been comparing the emotional range of dogs to that of a 2-yearold child meaning that they can comprehend emotions like joy, fear, anger, and love, but
not emotions like guilt, pride or shame. This article is definitely interesting and provides
information from past research concerning canines and their emotions, however, I am
hesitant to use it because it doesnt provide much background information about the
French philosophers and where their hypothesis originated from. I will probably refer to
this article, after doing more research on Descartes and Malebranch and their
philosophies.
Huber, Ludwig. How Dogs Perceive And Understand Us. Current Directions In Psychological
Science 25.5 (2016): 339-344. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Oct 2016.
This academic journal focuses on how canines combine multiple sensory skills to create
somewhat emotional responses to certain situations and whether dogs can form visualauditory representation of their owners within their minds. An experiment was conducted
using the auditory-visual expectancy violation procedure to figure whether dogs recall
their owners face upon hearing their owners voice. During this experiment, a dog was
shown either a photo of the owners face or an unfamiliar persons face after a
vocalization was played. Studies show that if the familiar sound of the owners voice
activated a visual representation within the dogs mind of their owner, but an unfamiliar

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face appeared, the dog would seem surprised and gaze longer at the picture. However, if
the face shown matched up with the vocalization of the owner, the dogs gaze was
significantly shorter. A similar experiment was also conducted when dogs were presented
with pictures of threatening facial expressions and friendly facial expressions. When
photographs were shown of humans with two different emotions expressed on their faces,
dogs didnt react much and therefore, not many results were gathered. However, when
shown pictures of other canines making aggressive, friendly, or neutral facial expressions,
dogs reacted more. This suggests that dogs might be able to differentiate between
emotional expressions in different species. The individual dogs responses to these
experiments might also depend on their experiences meaning that when confronted with
humans, dogs retrieve their certain memories and representations of situations or facial
expressions, consisting of multimodal sensory information. This also suggests that a
canines vision is key to their successful relationships with humans because they
communicate through gestures/emotional states. This academic journal provides extended
insight on why and how dogs might sense/empathize with emotions in humans and other
dogs. This expands on the interesting information from the article from the New York
Times website, and would be useful in continuing my discussion by adding more (and
different) scientific experiments.
Turner, Camilla. Dogs Can Imitate Each Others Expressions Just Like Humans, Study Find.
The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 23 Dec. 2015. Web. 17 Oct. 2016
This website featured an article concerning the facial expressions of both dogs and
humans and whether dogs can read humans emotions simply by looking at them. In this
article, an experiment involving 17 domestic dogs, used opposing pictures to gather

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results concerning dogs reactions. In this experiment, dogs would be shown multiple
pictures while listening to an audio recording, and based on the tone, the canines tended
to look at the picture that best matched it. Researcher Kun Guo from the University of
Lincolns School of Psychology said, Previous studies have indicated that dogs can
differentiate between human emotions from cues such as facial expressions, but this is
not the same as emotional recognition. Guos co-author, Professor Daniel Mills from the
School of Life Science at the University of Lincoln, also says, It has been a longstanding debate whether dogs can recognize human emotions. Many dog owners report
anecdotally that their pets seem highly sensitive to the moods of family members.
However, there is an important difference between associative behavior and recognizing a
range of very different cues that go together to indicate emotional arousing in another.
While this article has the potential to be quite interesting and helpful towards my
discussion with the opposing viewpoints of Dr. Guo and professor Mills, the article
doesnt offer enough substantial data or results and wouldnt be worth much if I were to
use it by itself. If I can find an article similar to this that discusses the same experiments,
but that has more support and information, I would definitely use it, at least to introduce
both sides of the discussion about canines and emotions.