Our publications among the most read articles of 2016

According to the Top 10 list of EurekAlert!, one of the leading sites for science news, two publications of ELTE research are among the ten most read articles of 2016. One of the joint papers of the ELTE Ethology Department and the MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research group on investigating episodic memory in dogs is on the second, while another on speech processing in the dog’s brain finished on the seventh place of this prestigious list.

The second most popular scientific article according to EurekAlert! is a study published in Current Biology. According to reported study, dogs are capable of “mental time travel”, meaning that they can remember episodes from the past, even when they could not anticipate that a memory of this episode may be needed in the future. Results have confirmed the use of episodic-like memory in dogs, providing the first piece of scientific evidence of dogs being able to recall a past action of their human partner. The on-line version of this article has been viewed by 299 194 on the site. You may find further information on this research HERE. video abstract

The seventh most read scientific publication reported Hungarian researchers being first in the world to study processing human speech in the dog’s brain. Their results show, that what we say and how we say it, are both relevant to our dogs. The article Neural mechanisms for lexical processing in dogs published in Science, dogs, similarly to humans, use the left hemisphere of their brain when processing word meaning, while the right hemisphere is responsible for processing intonation.  Verbal praise activates the reward centre of the dog’s brain, but only if both the meaning and intonation of the speech are praising. The on-line version of this article has been read 194 013 on the site. For more information please click HERE! video abstract