![]() The authors note there is also evidence from other studies that those suffering from mental health disorders such as anxiety may have difficulty receiving calming feedback from the frontal cortex in times of stress. The Yale team found that when neural connections between the hippocampus and frontal cortex were stronger, subjects reported feeling less stressed by the troublesome images.Ĭonversely, subjects reported feeling more stressed when the neural network between the hippocampus and hypothalamus was more active. ![]() The study reveals that neural connections emanating from the hippocampus when viewing these images reached not only areas of the brain associated with physiological stress responses, but also the dorsal lateral frontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in higher cognitive functions and regulation of emotions. Goldfarb and co-authors, including senior author Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, conducted a series of fMRI scans of subjects who were asked to quantify their stress levels when presented with troubling images. "We can't ask rats how they are feeling," said Elizabeth Goldfarb, associate research scientist at the Yale Stress Center and lead author of the study. But the source of the subjective experience of stress experienced by people during the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, has been more difficult to pinpoint. Activation of brain areas such as the hypothalamus triggers production of steroid hormones called glucocorticoids in the face of stress and threats. The brain networks that support the physiological response to stress have been well studied in animals. Children generally begin developing theory of mind by age three, and it's considered a milestone in cognitive development.Yale researchers have found a neural home of the feeling of stress people experience, an insight that may help people deal with the debilitating sense of fear and anxiety that stress can evoke, Yale researchers report May 27 in the journal Nature Communications.īrain scans of people exposed to highly stressful and troubling images - such as a snarling dog, mutilated faces or filthy toilets - reveal a network of neural connections emanating throughout the brain from the hippocampus, an area of the brain that helps regulate motivation, emotion and memory. One of Santos' questions about the canine mind is whether dogs have what's known in psychology as theory of mind - the ability to recognize that what other people are thinking is different from what you're thinking. ![]() "So the question is, given that they have similar environments, what does that tell us about their cognition?" "They don't have language and, obviously, they're not human, yet they grow up in exactly the same environments as children and rely on some of the same kinds of cues," she said. Santos said dogs may offer something to her research that monkeys can't. Santos is a professor of psychology, internationally known for her research of monkey behaviours. The Canine Cognition Center - where Santos and her researchers study dogs' decision-making processes and how they pick up on social cues - is the latest example of a growing interest in how dogs can offer insights into behavioural and cognitive science. That's starting to change in the world of academia, where the dog's status as a research subject has increased in recent years. "And they might have been shaped in a way that's very different from any other animal species in part because, in a sense, they (behave) more like a human child who's cued in (to humans) than, say, a chimpanzee."įor all that we ask of dogs - loyalty, companionship, slipper-fetching - rarely have we asked what drives dogs. ![]() "So much more than primates, dogs are more cued into what we care about and what we know," Santos said. Porter is growing up in the same kind of environment as human children, Santos said, so comparing how he learns with the way people learn can tell us a lot about human development. She pointed to the four-year-old chocolate Lab mix, brought in by psychology grad student Kristi Leimgruber. That's the hope of Laurie Santos, who runs the Canine Cognition Center at Yale, which opened in December. When Porter the dog tries to figure out why his owner has placed a toy bone under a bucket, his response might provide some insight about human development, autism and other learning disabilities.
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