Human language in dog brains

Spoken language conveys meaning in two ways: the meaning of the words (semantics or lexical knowledge) and the intonation that the speaker uses. We can sense questions by the rising pitch at the end of the sentence. Likewise, we can tell if someone is upset or being sarcastic based on how they say the words. The patterns of intonation in language is known as prosody. There are areas of the brain that are specialized for decoding the semantic meaning of language and different areas for interpreting prosody. In fact, you can have damage to one area during a stroke, while the other area remains intact. There are great examples of this in “The President’s Speech” in Oliver Sacks' book The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.

In most people, word meanings are processed by the left side of the brain and prosody is localized to the right side of the brain. Some animals also use the left side of their brains to understand meaningful and familiar sounds of their species (like alert calls or bird songs). What about for animals, like dogs, which can understand the sounds of another species (i.e. commands from humans). Is the dog brain really processing the intonations of praise “good dog!” or are they responding to the words? Do they process meaning and intonation separately like humans do?

Dogs in MRI machines

In the latest issue of Science, Andies et al. published their studies of language processing in dog brains. My first thought when I read the abstract was “how do you get a dog into an MRI machine?” We commonly study which areas of human brains are active during different tasks using a technique called functional MRI (or fMRI). fMRI was done on these dogs while they listened to their trainers speak. If you have ever had an MRI scan, you know they strap you in and you cannot move your head at all. Same thing with these dogs. Needless to say, they were very well trained dogs. If you still can’t believe it, check out this video the researchers made and the cute photo of dogs in an MRI machine below.

Really well trained dogs lying still before their MRIs. (Image from phys.org)

Dogs process language like humans

Okay, so they got the dogs in the MRI machine and scanned their brains while they heard their trainer say different things. The trainer would either say words of praise, like “good boy” (in Hungarian), or neutral words. And they used either a neutral, flat intonation or they raised the pitch of their voice to create a praising intonation. This created four possibilities:

• Praise words with praising intonation
• Praise words with neutral intonation
• Neutral words with praising intonation
• Neutral words with neutral intonation

They compared the brain responses to each combination and found that the left side of the brain responded to words of praise regardless of the intonation. This is amazing, right? The dogs have heard “good boy” enough times that their brains responded specifically to that phrase regardless of how it was said. It’s like they sort of know what it means. It would be interesting to see if they respond to the same phrase spoken by a stranger.

The researchers also found that the right side of the brain had active areas when praising intonation was used, regardless of the word meaning. So dogs also understand how our voices change when we praise them.

Finally, the researchers looked at areas of the brain associated with reward. These areas are active in a variety of animals when they receive natural rewards like food or during sex, but the reward pathways are also active if the animal is given an addictive drug like cocaine. Alternatively, you can put an electrode into a mouse brain that stimulates the reward pathway and the mouse will push a lever to receive an electrical shock in this area of the brain over and over until it starves.

Andies et al. found that praising words spoken in a praising intonation activated the reward pathway in the dogs. Praise words alone and praise intonation alone had no effect. So dogs really do feel good when you say “good dog” in a high pitched voice.

Notice the organization of language processing in the dog brain. Just like in humans, language semantics (praise vs neutral words) was processed on the left side and prosody (praise vs neutral intonation) was processed on the right side. What does this tell us about the evolution of language? Language lateralization has likely been around a long time and is not uniquely human. The authors end the article with this gem: “What makes lexical items uniquely human is thus not the neural capacity to process them, but the invention of using them.”

Isolation and drug addiction

We all know that adverse, early life experiences can affect normal development and the ability to lead a happy and healthy adult life.  A number of recent studies have shown that rodents which are mistreated as pups have long lasting changes to their gene expression (i.e. epigenetics).  They are more anxious and have a harder time forming new memories.  A paper this week in Neuron builds upon these results, by studying the effects of social isolation on the “reward pathway” in the brain.

Reward pathway

What is a reward pathway?  Deep in the brain is a region known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), which makes connections to the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex.  When we do something that is naturally good, like eating or sex, the neurons in the VTA release dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens and we interpret that as “feeling good”.  This is our reward for doing something that will help us survive and procreate. 

The Reward Pathway in a brain cross section (from brainfacts.org)

Many drugs of abuse like cocaine, amphetamines and alcohol increase the amount of dopamine signaling in this pathway; this is one reason why drugs produce a “high”.  When this pathway gets overstimulated by increased drug use, the brain will try to compensate by making the pathway less efficient.  This is why drug users feel depressed when not on drugs and why higher and higher concentrations of drugs are necessary to produce the same high feeling.  This is a neurological explanation for drug addiction.  Drug abusers also start to make connections in their lives, and in their brains, between environments (a certain room, certain people, etc) and the feeling of reward.  Getting sober is so difficult because the brain has to unlearn these connections and the reward system has to recover back to its normal level of activity.

Plasticity

Before we talk about the paper, I need to introduce one more concept.  Neurons become activated when channels in their membranes open and positive ions rush in.  They can then pass on this signal to another neuron by releasing neurotransmitters (like dopamine) onto the next neuron.  The activity in the neuron and the amount of transmitter it releases into the synapse can change over time, based on that neuron’s previous experiences.  This is known as synaptic plasticity.  There are short-term changes, like facilitation, and longer-term changes (we’re talking hours and days here).  One of the more famous types of long-term plasticity is called long term potentiation (LTP) and is thought to underlie learning and memory.  When drug users start to become addicted, these types of long term changes to neuronal activity are occurring throughout the reward pathway.

Social isolation and VTA neurons

The experiment begins when young male rats were either housed together in groups of 3 or alone.  The researchers then recorded neuronal activity of VTA neurons under various conditions.  They found that rats that were isolated for more than 3 weeks, specifically during the equivalent of the rats’ early adolescence, can more easily induce LTP in the VTA neurons.  In other words, rats that had no social interactions during a critical period had more sensitive VTA neurons.  That is to say, their reward pathway is primed to be overstimulated, just like during repeated drug use.

What are the behavioral manifestations of having a sensitive reward pathway?

The next set of experiments they did is called conditioned place preference.  The rats were placed in a cage that had two different compartments, with different wall colors and floor textures.  The rats were then injected with amphetamine in one of those particular compartments, so they learned to associate the drug high with that environment.  The rats were then given a choice between the two compartments and inevitably they went to the room that was associated with the drug.  The researchers found that isolated rats had a greater preference for the drug room and developed the preference sooner than the control rats.  Social isolation as an adolescent causes an increased rate of learning an association between drugs and environment.  This could make these rats more vulnerable to drug addiction. 

What about unlearning the drug association?

After the drug testing, the rats were exposed repeatedly to the drug room, but this time they didn’t receive any drugs.  This is called extinction of a memory and it is measured by the rats losing their preference for the former drug compartment.   Socially isolated animals had a significantly slower rate of unlearning the preference.  Their memory was more resistant to extinction.  If their VTA neurons are overly sensitive, then it may be harder to rewrite that connection in the brain between environment and reward.

In the context of drug addiction, these findings are big.  An adverse early adolescence can prime the brain to develop addiction more easily and make it harder to sober up.  If the VTA neurons start firing every time you go through an environment associated with drugs, you’re going to want to take a hit again.  The authors bring up an interesting point that social isolation generally causes a depression of neuronal activity in places like the hippocampus (the site of learning), so maybe the increased activity in the VTA is the way for the brain to maintain some sort of homeostasis – some areas increase, some decrease, but overall the brain may have normal amounts of activity.  This is an interesting way of looking at this problem.  I suspect that social isolation offers little in the way of rewards, so the reward pathway is trying to compensate by getting more sensitive.  It will be interesting to see if there is also a connection with changes in gene expression.  The authors explain how the VTA neurons get overactive, from a cellular point of view, but what actually initiates those changes?  And how can social interactions feed into the biology of the cell?