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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 brains work as compared to how a humans brains work. 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 then one that(and
the other one which signified) 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(might be a little long of sentence but idk, It just sounds
longish to me). In humans, the caudate nucleus deciphers things we enjoy, like love,
food or(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

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of a human child. The author of this article, Gregory Berns, seems very credible,
experienced and 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
uncovered(would discovered be a better fit?). 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 much revered(whoa much revered lol) fluffy
companions. From articles advising owners what is safe to feed their pups, to articles
providing owners with warning signals(signs) to watch out for when dealing with a sick
dog, Modern Dog Magazine has it all. The article I choose to focus on related specifically
to dogs emotions and the way that (technology)science has developed over the years and
uncovered new answers. During the 1500s, French philosopher and scientist, Rene
Descartes, suggested that animals (like dogs) function simply like a type of machine
would(I would take out the would). Later, Nicholas de Malebranch, another French
philosopher, extended(would expanded be a better word?) 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

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Descartes and Malebranchs ideas(or 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 and do not feel. However, science has come a long way since then and it has
since been discovered that canines possess all of the same brain structures, hormones and
even undergo the same chemical changes that humans, do which allows us to produce
emotions. This being said, Coren then reminds the audience that the studies dont
necessarily prove that the emotional ranges of dogs and humans are equivalent. In recent
research, scientist 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.
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 situations and whether dogs can form visual-auditory
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

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representation within the dogs mind of their owner, but an unfamiliar face appeared, the
dog would seem surprised and gaze longer at the picture(Beginning of this sentence
doesnt make sense I dont think?). However, if the face shown matched up with the
vocalization of the owner, the dogs gaze was significantly shorter.(A similar
experiment) This experiment was also tested(conducted) when dogs were presented
with pictures of a threatening facial expression vs(and a) friendly facial expressions.
When photographs were shown of humans with two different emotions shown(expressed)
on their faces, dogs didnt react much and therefore, they didnt gather many results.
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(run
on? Maybe?). This also suggest 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 others. This expands on the interesting information
from the article from(on) 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

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This website featured an article concerning the facial expressions of both dogs and
humans and whether or not dogs can read(sence) humans emotions simply by looking at
them. In this article, an experiment involving 17 domestic dogs, used opposing pictures to
gather 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
long standing 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 it wouldnt be worth much help. If I
am able to 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
to(of) the discussion about canines and emotions.