Dog neuroimaging data from: Action observation reveals a network with divergent temporal and parietal cortex engagement in dogs compared to humans

Action observation is a fundamental pillar of social cognition. Neuroimaging research has revealed a human and non-human primate action observation network (AON) encompassing fronto-temporo-parietal areas with links to the species’ imitation tendencies and relative lobe expansion. Dogs (Canis familiaris) have good action perception and imitation skills and a less expanded parietal than temporal cortex, but their AON remains unexplored. We conducted a functional MRI study with 28 dogs and 40 humans and found functionally analogous involvement of somatosensory and temporal brain areas of both species’ AONs and responses to transitive and intransitive action observation in line with their imitative skills. Employing a functional localizer, we also identified functionally analogous agent-responsive areas within both species’ AONs. However, activation and task-based functional connectivity measures suggested significantly less parietal cortex involvement in dogs than in humans. These findings advance our understanding of the neural bases of action understanding and the convergent evolution of social cognition, with analogies and differences resulting from similar social environments and divergent brain expansion, respectively.

This data set contains:

• raw functional neuroimaging data of N = 28 dogs
• structural scans of the same dogs including brain masks & skull-stripped versions
• eventfiles containing the condition names, onsets and durations for each dog and task run

Data of the comparative human neuroimaging sample will be made available by the first author upon reasonable request.

Please also visit our Open Science Framework project site for group-level imaging data of both species (https://osf.io/z479k/).