SALON
We're going to go ahead and assume that the results apply to cats too...
Joanna Rothkopf
(Credit: Sinseeho via Shutterstock)
A
PLOS ONE study recently confirmed what many of us already knew: dog love can be extremely similar to maternal love.
“Alloparenting,”
or adopting and caring for different species– has occurred for tens of
thousands of years (the first domesticated dog dates back to 32,000
years ago). Around two-thirds of American households have pets and spend
over $50 billion every year on their well-being.
In this study,
researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital sought to directly
compare the “functional neuroanatomy of the human-pet bond with that of
the maternal-child bond.” To do so, they had women look at photos of
their babies and their dogs, as well as babies and dogs that they didn’t
know.
“There was a common network of brain regions involved in
emotion, reward, affiliation, visual processing and social cognition
when mothers viewed images of both their child and dog,” reads the
study. The unfamiliar photos didn’t provoke the same reaction.
The Washington Post’s Rachel Feltman
reports:
But
brain response to children and dogs wasn’t entirely the same: An area
of the brain vital to processing faces was activated more by a dog
picture than a child’s face, while parts of the midbrain were more
active in response to children. It may be that facial cues are more
important in human-to-dog communication, given our lack of common
language. And the midbrain areas could be vital in forming
human-to-human pair b0nds, National Geographic reports.
Although
more research needs to be done to replicate the findings, it does make
sense that we should have such important bonds with our pets.
“Pets
hold a special place in many people’s hearts and lives, and there is
compelling evidence from clinical and laboratory studies that
interacting with pets can be beneficial to the physical, social and
emotional wellbeing of humans,”
said Lori Palley,
DVM, of the MGH Center for Comparative Medicine and co-lead author of
the report. “Several previous studies have found that levels of
neurohormones like oxytocin – which is involved in pair-bonding and
maternal attachment – rise after interaction with pets, and new brain
imaging technologies are helping us begin to understand the
neurobiological basis of the relationship, which is exciting.”
Joanna Rothkopf is an assistant editor at Salon,
focusing on sustainability. Follow @JoannaRothkopf or email
jrothkopf@salon.com.
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