• A new study found that dogs trained with the Do as I Do method can imitate human actions from two-dimensional video projections. Dogs’ ability to process and replicate actions observed in 2D video projections aligns with their everyday observational perspective with humans. Fugazza C., Higaki F. (2024) Exploring the use of projected videos to test action matching from different perspectives in dogs. Biologia Futura DOI 10.1007/s42977-024-00222-6

• Researchers at Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary find a human N400-like semantic mismatch effect in dogs’ ERPs to objects primed with matching or mismatching object words, revealing that object words can evoke mental representations of the referred objects in dogs. The referential understanding of object words is thus not a distinctive feature of the human language faculty. (ez az eTOC blurb) See more: Boros, Magyari et al. (2024) Neural evidence for referential understanding of object words in dogs, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.029

• Dogs provide new insights into aging and cognition. The quest to understand intelligence and unravel the workings of the mind has always been considered the holy grail of natural sciences. Animals can provide valuable insights into the origins and organisation of both mind and intellect. In their latest study, researchers at the Department of Ethology at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University discovered that dogs may possess a key component of intelligence known as the "g factor". Importantly, this factor shares many characteristics with its human counterpart, including its ageing patterns. These findings could bring us closer to understanding how dog (and human) cognition is organised, and how cognitive decline progresses with age. Bognár, Z., Turcsán, B., Faragó, T. et al. Age-related effects on a hierarchical structure of canine cognition. GeroScience (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-024-01123-1

• Dogs’ food preferences are mirrored in their brain activity, particularly within their caudate nuclei -a brain region associated with reward processing, a new study combining behavioural and neuroimaging data by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University and Symrise Pet Food finds. This work has been published in Scientific Reports: Cuaya, L.V., Hernández-Pérez, R., Andics, A. et al. Representation of rewards differing in their hedonic valence in the caudate nucleus correlates with the performance in a problem-solving task in dogs (Canis familiaris). Sci Rep 13, 14353 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40539-1

• Dog brains show greater sensitivity to dog-directed speech than to adult-directed speech, especially if spoken by women, according to a study entitled ‘Dog brains are tuned to female’s dog-directed speech’ published recently in Communications Biology. Exciting similarities between infant and dog brains during the processing of speech with exaggerated prosody were revealed by Hungarian researchers at the Research Centre for Natural Sciences, the Eötvös Loránd University and the Eötvös Loránd Research Network. Gergely, A., Gábor, A., Gácsi, M. et al. Dog brains are sensitive to infant- and dog-directed prosody. Commun Biol 6, 859 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05217-y

• The first part of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series presents the design of ethological studies. We highly recommend it for biology students and future researchers. Featuring interviews with Dr. Péter Pongrácz and Márta Gácsi. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).

• The fourth part of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series introduces the Alpha Generation Lab. Produced by Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).

• In Episode 6 of the "Behavioral Biology for You - with You" series, the Companion Animals Research Group is introduced. Created by: Zsófia Bognár, Rita Lenkei, Ádám Leéb, Tamás Faragó, and Enikő Kubinyi. The production of the video was supported by the NKFIH Mecenatúra grant (MEC_N 141314).

• Film about dog-wolf comparisons by the Ethology Department at ELTE University (2005). Director: Attila Dávid Molnár, Editor: Enikő Kubinyi.

• Ethorobotics is a unique research area of the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University. Ethorobotics is a discipline where biologists, computer scientists and engineer working on animal and human behaviour work together to find out how robots can be better at communicating and interacting with humans. You can find out more on Biscee's own site: https://bisceerobot.hu/en/

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