Dogs can match some words to objects, study says

(CNN) – A new study suggests dogs can understand that certain words refer to specific objects, so they may understand words in a similar way to humans.

Researchers said it offers the first evidence of brain activity for this comprehension in a non-human animal.

In the study, 18 dog owners said words for objects their dogs already knew.

Then, the owners held up either the matching object or a different one while an EEG measured the dogs’ brain activity.

Scientists observed a difference in the brain activity in a majority of the dogs when they were shown an object that matched with the word, compared to one that mismatched.

The authors said the resulting brain activity was the same as those produced by humans in similar experiments.

The study’s conclusion has faced scrutiny from other experts in the field.

One said dogs lack the two areas of the brain crucial for human understanding of language, so the EEG pattern highlighted by the researchers is not shared by humans.

The findings were published in the journal Current Biology in March.