13/08/2025
MRI scans confirm that your dog’s brain lights up most when it smells YOU — not food, not other dogs.
Research from Emory University suggests dogs may see humans as family more than they see fellow dogs.
Researchers trained pet dogs to remain still in MRI scanners and exposed them to a variety of scents—including food, other dogs, and their human owners.
The brain scans revealed that the smell of their owners triggered the strongest activation in the caudate nucleus, the brain’s “reward center.”
This suggests that dogs prioritize their bond with humans above all else, even over the lure of food. The findings align with earlier research in Budapest showing that dogs’ brains also light up in response to happy human voices.
The research builds on a growing body of evidence that dogs have evolved to form unique emotional connections with people.
They are the only non-primate species known to hold direct eye contact with humans and the only domesticated animals to seek human comfort when distressed. Brain scans of mothers with both children and dogs revealed that seeing either activated reward centers equally—suggesting that the human-dog bond can rival parent-child attachment.
These results offer a neurological explanation for why dogs are so deeply integrated into human families, reinforcing the idea that, to a dog, we’re not just companions—we’re their pack.
Source:
Berns, G. S., Brooks, A. M., & Spivak, M. (2015). Scent of the familiar: An fMRI study of canine brain responses to familiar and unfamiliar human and dog odors. Behavioural Processes, 110, 37–46.
