People often look to dogs’ behavior, especially their facial expressions, for indications of their states of mind. Numerous studies show that this is a popular interpretation strategy. However, modern dog breeds vary greatly in size and structure, and few studies have explored how breed-specific morphology might affect humans’ ability to assess visual cues from the faces of different breeds of dogs.

Now, for the first time, a collaborative research team including scientists from Israel, Czechia, and Hungary has used eye-tracking to compare the visual attention patterns of humans observing photographs of normocephalic and brachycephalic dogs. A research paper detailing the team’s findings appears in Frontiers in Veterinary Science.

While humans are acquiring new skills that entail performing coordinated movements, such as walking, playing an instrument or skateboarding, their brains are known to continuously detect mistakes and correct movements over time. This gradual acquisition of task-specific movements is known as motor learning.

Past neuroscience studies suggest that a brain region known as the cerebellum plays a central role in motor learning. The cerebellum is a structure at the back of the brain that contributes to coordination, balancing the timing of voluntary actions and the execution of precise movements.

This brain structure hosts a type of nerve cell known as Purkinje cells (PCs), which receive input information via climbing fibers (CFs), nerve fibers that originate from a lower region in the brainstem. Neuroscientists have hypothesized that climbing fibers also carry signals that instruct the brain to adapt to movements based on earlier mistakes.

A new study reveals that the brain may handle voluntary and forced decisions using remarkably similar neural mechanisms.

Laughter restructures the brain, lowers cognitive load, and builds emotional resilience.

HKU researchers developed AIMED, a microscopy method that speeds 3D imaging using compressed measurements.