Have you ever wondered how your dog’s brain works? Like any other mammal, our furry friend’s brain is a complex system that controls its actions, learning, and thinking. The brain is also responsible for integrating and interpreting information from various parts of the body. A convenient way to understand how we think relative to dogs is by comparing different parts of our brains. Both humans and canines have four lobes. Lobes are large areas of your brain that have a certain location and are associated with a set of functions. They are referred to as frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes.
The Frontal Lobe
The frontal lobe, for humans, depends on developing a set of long-range and short-range connections. These connections allow us to control functions such as planning, attention, self-monitoring, impulse control, intelligence, and motor execution (1). Similarly, to humans, dogs’ frontal lobe functions are also responsible for alertness and motor functions (2). This can include mood. However, as the brains of our dogs are significantly smaller than ours, they have a smaller frontal lobe which contains fewer folds and less surface area (3). Research has shown dogs with more brain activity in their frontal lobes have more self-control as a result and are therefore able to control their behavior better (4). When a dog ignores potentially exciting stimuli in favor of behavior that is more likely to please their person, they are exhibiting extreme self-control! Sizes of the frontal lobe vary based on the sizes of your dogs, thus further research is needed to determine why some dogs or breeds have higher brain activity in that area than others.
The Parietal Lobe
The parietal lobe interprets sensory information from the outside world and decodes it for processing for both humans and dogs. A big example of this is our ability to decode numerical information. Research has found that we have the same brain activity in our parietal lobe when facing numbers (6). They are able to quantify objects and therefore count and compare the proportions of different things. This means we have common brain mechanisms with dogs. Their ability to process information helps to let them know if they’re in danger or not. This can result in barking! Next time, your dog is barking at your mailman or favorite Amazon delivery rep, just remember their brain is telling them there could be a threat. So, protect that turf.
The Temporal Lobe
Ever wonder why your dog can recognize your face and voice? This is because of the temporal lobe. The temporal lobe is primarily responsible for interpreting sounds and recognizing things such as faces. Similarly, to humans, dogs use visual cues to scan human faces and determine underlying emotions or anticipated actions (7). At Wise Woofs, we believe that dogs are experts in studying facial expressions because they do it all day and rely heavily on body language to communicate. There are similar results with auditory clues. Have you ever thought that your dog was understanding you perfectly and sometimes followed the conversation as well? Researchers found that vocal emotional cues activated a similar region of the brain in both humans and dogs (8). However, this ability to identify human voices is far less in dogs than it is in humans. Therefore, dogs’ have a more advanced ability to interpret nuanced visual cues as opposed to auditory tones.
The Occipital Lobe
The occipital lobe is responsible for visual perception, including color and spatial motion. For dogs, this is coined as their visual cortex (9). Dogs can “see” with their smell which is regulated by the olfactory system. Recent discoveries in science have found a connection between the olfactory system and the occipital lobe. (10). One difference between the human and canine brain is our brain processes the entirety of smells around us to come up with a singular, blended result. With such a relatively large portion of their brain centered around smell, dogs can actually determine different components within a “smell”. Therefore, they don’t just smell the cheeseburger, they smell the bun, burger, ketchup, mustard, lettuce, onions, and pickles!
This can be comforting to dog owners whose dogs have eye diseases. Some dogs can live to such old ages with blindness and we now know because of this newfound discovery; dogs can smell objects and make a sense of where they are. They form spatial awareness, sense moods, and track pretty much anything. It helps explain how dogs orient themselves to new environments.
The human brain and the canine brain while, smaller, continue to have similar mechanisms that are found throughout all mammals. We are more alike than we are different
As you can see, your dog’s brain is a well-oiled machine that enables them to adapt to its environments and express behaviors. These neurological systems enable us to understand our dogs more and more! With more research we will continue to develop a greater understanding of how our dogs operate leading to an improvement in both human and k9 lives.
