PHOTO: De Andre Bush/Unsplash
PHOTO: De Andre Bush/Unsplash

How petting dogs could be good for you (not that you needed a reason)

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Experimental study: At least one thing in the experiment was changed to see if it had an impact on the subjects (often people or animals) – eg: changing the amount of time mice spend on an exercise wheel to find out what impact it has on weight loss.

People: This is a study based on research using people.

Animals: This is a study based on research on whole animals.

Petting dogs seems to boost a part of our brain that helps regulate and process social and emotional interactions. Overseas researchers measured activity in the prefrontal cortex of 19 people as they each interacted with a real-life pupper. As a control, the same interactions were measured using a stuffed animal named Leo. Activity was greater when folks interacted with the real dogs, and this difference was the largest when people pet them, instead of when they simply looked at the canine or when it reclined next to them. The team says the results suggest that involving animals in therapeutic interventions might be a promising approach for improving emotional involvement and attention.

Journal/conference: PLOS One

Link to research (DOI): 10.1371/journal.pone.0274833

Organisation/s: University of Basel, Switzerland; REHAB Basel, Switzerland; University of Zurich, Switzerland; University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland; Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Switzerland; Open University, Netherlands

Funder: This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under an Ambizione [grant number PZ00P1_174082/1] to K. H. and by the Stiftung pro REHAB Basel. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Media release

From: PLOS

Researchers led by Rahel Marti at the University of Basel in Switzerland report that viewing, feeling, and touching real dogs leads to increasingly higher levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Published in PLOS ONE on October 5, the study shows that this effect persists after the dogs are no longer present, but is reduced when real dogs are replaced with stuffed animals. The findings have implications for animal-assisted clinical therapy.

Because interacting with animals, particularly dogs, is known to help people cope with stress and depression, researchers think that a better understanding of the associated brain activity could help clinicians design improved systems for animal-assisted therapy. The prefrontal cortex might be particularly relevant because it helps regulate and process social and emotional interactions.

In the study, activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain was non-invasively measured with infrared neuroimaging technology as 19 men and women each viewed a dog, reclined with the same dog against their legs, or petted the dog. Each of these conditions was also performed with Leo, a stuffed lion with fur that was filled with a water bottle to match the temperature and weight of the dogs.

Results showed that prefrontal brain activity was greater when participants interacted with the real dogs, and that this difference was largest for petting, which was the most interactive condition. Another key difference was that prefrontal brain activity increased each time people interacted with the real dog. This was not observed with successive interactions with the stuffed lion, indicating that the response might be related to familiarity or social bonding.

Future studies will be needed to examine the issue of familiarity in detail and whether petting animals can trigger a similar boost of prefrontal brain activity in patients with socioemotional deficits.

The authors add: “The present study demonstrates that prefrontal brain activity in healthy subjects increased with a rise in interactional closeness with a dog or a plush animal, but especially in contact with the dog the activation is stronger. This indicates that interactions with a dog might activate more attentional processes and elicit stronger emotional arousal than comparable nonliving stimuli.”

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