Citation

Author Website

http://www.psy.unsw.edu.au/contacts-people/academic-staff/associate-professor-tom-denson

Commentary Type

Invited Commentary

Thread

Peter Cook, Ashley Prichard, Mark Spivak, and Gregory S. Berns, Jealousy in dogs? Evidence from brain imaging

Abstract

Cook et al. investigated neural responses in domestic dogs in an experiment designed to elicit jealousy. Relative to a control condition, watching the dogs’ caregivers feed a fake dog activated the amygdala bilaterally. Dogs rated higher in dog-directed aggressiveness showed larger initial amygdala activation. Amygdala activity in this context is insufficient evidence to infer that the dogs experienced jealousy or even negative affect. The experimental design does not provide an adequate level of control to infer the presence of jealousy.

Author Biography

Tom Denson is associate professor of psychology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is an experimental social-personality psychologist. His primary interests are anger and aggression, social neuroscience, and social neuroendocrinology. He has conducted several functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of anger and aggression in humans. Website

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1337