Dogs' brains can distinguish fearful faces from angry or sad ones, MRI study shows

For thousands of years, dogs have watched human faces with an attention that seems almost knowing — and now, for the first time, researchers have looked back, peering inside the dog brain to understand what that watching actually means. A team at the University of Vienna used MRI scans to reveal that dogs do not merely sense a general emotional tone from human expressions; they process happiness in a neurologically distinct way, and can even separate fear from anger and sadness when their whole brain is considered. The findings suggest that domestication did not simply make dogs tolerant of hu