2 . Every dog owner knows that saying Good dog! A happy, high-pitched voice will bring about a flurry of joyful tail wagging in their pet.

That makes scientists curious. What exactly happens in your dog’s brain when it hears praise? And is it similar to the way our own brain processes such acoustic information?

When a person gets a compliment, the more primitive subcortical(皮下的)auditory regions first react to the intonation(声调) , the emotional force of spoken words. Next, the brain taps the more recently evolved auditory cortex(皮质)to figure out the meaning of the words, which is learned.

    1     Of course, dogs use their right brain hemisphere to do so, whereas we use our left hemisphere. Still, a mystery remains. Do their brains go through the same steps to process approval?

It’s an important question. Dogs are speechless species.    2     For instance, some dogs are able to recognize thousands of names of individual objects. They can even link each name to a specific object.

When the scientists studied scans of the brains of pet dogs, they found that theirs, like ours, processed the sounds of spoken words in a multi-step manner. They analyze first the emotional component with the older region of the brain, the subcortical regions. Subsequently, they deal with the words’ meaning with the newer part, the cortex.

Previous studies have shown that many animals, from songbirds to dolphins, use the subcortex to process emotional hints.    3    Zebras, for instance, can eavesdrop on the emotion, or fright to be precise, in other herbivore(食草动物)animals^’ calls. In this way they learn if predators are nearby.

It’s likely that human language evolved from such hints. We employ the same neurological systems to develop speech.    4    Dogs have the very likeliness to make special use of the ancient connection to process human emotions. It helps explain why dogs are so successful at partnering with us and at times manipulating us with those soulful eyes.