TY - JOUR
KW - animal experimentation
KW - animal rights
KW - animal welfare
KW - Animals
KW - Brain
KW - Brain Mapping
KW - Child
KW - Cognition
KW - Cues
KW - Dogs
KW - Emotions
KW - Empathy
KW - Ethics, Research
KW - Face
KW - Humans
KW - Neurosciences
KW - Pleasure
KW - Voice
KW - animal experimentation
KW - neuroimaging
KW - Research ethics
AU - Jarrod Bailey
AU - Shiranee Pereira
AB - Functional MRI (fMRI) of fully awake and unrestrained dog 'volunteers' has been proven an effective tool to understand the neural circuitry and functioning of the canine brain. Although every dog owner would vouch that dogs are perceptive, cognitive, intuitive and capable of positive emotions/empathy, as indeed substantiated by ethological studies for some time, neurological investigations now corroborate this. These studies show that there exists a striking similarity between dogs and humans in the functioning of the caudate nucleus (associated with pleasure and emotion), and dogs experience positive emotions, empathic-like responses and demonstrate human bonding which, some scientists claim, may be at least comparable with human children. There exists an area analogous to the 'voice area' in the canine brain, enabling dogs to comprehend and respond to emotional cues/valence in human voices, and evidence of a region in the temporal cortex of dogs involved in the processing of faces, as also observed in humans and monkeys. We therefore contend that using dogs in invasive and/or harmful research, and toxicity testing, cannot be ethically justifiable.
BT - Journal of Medical Ethics
DA - 2018-01
DO - 10.1136/medethics-2016-103630
IS - 1
LA - eng
N2 - Functional MRI (fMRI) of fully awake and unrestrained dog 'volunteers' has been proven an effective tool to understand the neural circuitry and functioning of the canine brain. Although every dog owner would vouch that dogs are perceptive, cognitive, intuitive and capable of positive emotions/empathy, as indeed substantiated by ethological studies for some time, neurological investigations now corroborate this. These studies show that there exists a striking similarity between dogs and humans in the functioning of the caudate nucleus (associated with pleasure and emotion), and dogs experience positive emotions, empathic-like responses and demonstrate human bonding which, some scientists claim, may be at least comparable with human children. There exists an area analogous to the 'voice area' in the canine brain, enabling dogs to comprehend and respond to emotional cues/valence in human voices, and evidence of a region in the temporal cortex of dogs involved in the processing of faces, as also observed in humans and monkeys. We therefore contend that using dogs in invasive and/or harmful research, and toxicity testing, cannot be ethically justifiable.
PY - 2018
SP - 47
EP - 52
T2 - Journal of Medical Ethics
TI - Advances in neuroscience imply that harmful experiments in dogs are unethical
UR - https://jme.bmj.com/content/44/1/47
VL - 44
SN - 1473-4257
ER -