Petting dogs increases emotional arousal
Petting the dog increased the activity in the prefrontal cortex the most.
A study led by academics from Switzerland has found that interacting with dogs leads to higher levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex of humans, improving emotional involvement and attention.
Researchers found that this stimulating effect continues after interaction with the dogs are over, but the effect is reduced when the real dogs are replaced with stuffed animals. The findings of this have potential implications for animal-assisted clinical therapy.
In order to explore the effect of animal contact on the human brain, and to understand what happens within the brain in different forms of human-dog contact, researchers found 21 healthy individuals to take part in six sessions each.
For three of these sessions, participants had contact with a dog, and in the three control sessions, they interacted with a plush animal. In these sessions, researchers measured oxygenated, deoxygenated, and total haemoglobin and oxygen saturation in the blood in the frontal lobe of the brain to assess the brain activity.
Participants had the opportunity to view a dog, recline with the dog against their legs, and pet the dog. All of these conditions were replicated with the plush animal, which was filled with a water bottle to match the dogs' weight and temperature.
Researchers found that the prefrontal brain activity increased when the intensity of contact with the dog or plush animal increased, confirming that more stimulation correlates with higher brain activity.
The results also showed that participants had higher prefrontal brain activity when interacting with the real dog than the plush animal.
Analysing the results, the researchers have hypothesised that given the high emotional relevance of social interactions with animals for the majority of humans, interacting with the dog led to higher emotional involvement in the participants than the plush animal – correlating with higher frontal activity.
Alongside this, the researchers hypothesise that the real dog activates a focus on them, and attention within humans, and attentional processes are also located within the frontal cortex.
Higher physiological arousal could also explain the results, with the interaction with the real dog potentially causing a greater cognitive load, being a more complex stimulus than a plush animal.
The findings could have implications for animal-assisted therapy, indicating that interactions with a dog could activate more attentional processes and create stronger emotional arousal.
Published in PLOS ONE on 5 October 2022, the study is open access.
The BSAVA has opened submissions for the BSAVA Clinical Research Abstracts 2026.
