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Scientists have found out that dogs can really hear us even while sleeping

Ihor Romanko

Dogs hear people in their sleep
Dogs hear people in their sleep

Dogs continue to amaze scientists, and a new pilot study shows that they can respond to voices even when they are deeply asleep.

Read also: Scientists have named dog breeds that will not be able to survive if humans disappear on Earth

This study, conducted by ethologists from the University of Etwesch, Laurent Huba and their colleagues, involved 13 dogs. They were connected to devices that measure brain wave responses related to events and were exposed to various sounds, including dog and human voices. This was reported by Sciense Alert.

This study was the first to confirm the complex processing of hearing in dogs during sleep. The dogs responded to sounds even in REM sleep, determining whether they were the voices of other dogs or humans and whether they were associated with positive or neutral emotions.

These findings add to the list of similarities between the sleep behavior of dogs and humans. Dogs use sleep to reinforce their memories and process emotions, and their sleep becomes more similar to that of humans after domestication. They also suffer from various sleep disorders in old age, similar to people with dementia.

This study opens up opportunities for further research into neurobiology and the possibility of jointly studying the mammalian brain using dogs in comparative studies.

As a reminder, we have already written about how to understand your dog by its behavior.

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