Dogs may be better at reading human emotions than previously thought, with a new study finding that they can distinguish between different emotions displayed on people’s faces.

Researchers at the University of Vienna used machine learning to analyse brain scans of 12 dogs as they viewed images of human faces showing different emotions.

The study, published in the Cell Press journal iScience, found that certain areas of the dogs’ brains responded specifically to happy faces.

Taking insights from Reuters, brain regions associated with higher cognitive functions and reward processing, including the temporal cortex and caudate nucleus, were activated when the dogs viewed images of happy strangers. The same response was not observed when the dogs were shown faces expressing anger, fear or sadness.

However, when researchers analysed activity across the dogs’ entire brains, they found distinct patterns associated with fear, anger and sadness. This suggests that dogs can differentiate between specific negative emotions in human faces.

Researchers said the findings provide the first evidence that dogs can distinguish between different human facial expressions based on brain activity.

“Dogs have evolved with us to understand our expressions and cooperate with us, and recognising that can change how we communicate with and care for them,” said Laura Cuaya, the study’s senior author.

The researchers now plan to examine how dogs combine facial expressions with other human cues, including body language, tone of voice and scent, when interpreting people’s emotions.

They also hope to compare how human and canine brains process the same emotional signals.

The researchers cautioned that all 12 dogs involved in the study were pets from loving family environments. Dogs raised in different settings may therefore respond differently to human emotional cues, they said.