Feeling down? Here's what petting a dog does for your brain...
Just what we needed to hear...A good cuddle always hits the mark...
The effects of having furry family members have always been something of a known to us.
But not from a scientific standpoint, more from an emotional standpoint. Because being animal lovers, we have personally experienced what it feels like receiving the love and reciprocating that love to our furry family members, aka our pets.
The feeling of joy and unconditional love is healing, brings heartfelt warmth and most of all comfort.
Hearing about a new study that was published and shared on CNN, sealed the deal for us because it added the science to the emotion.
In this case it was examining and noting down the effects of sitting next and petting a dog versus a stuffed animal (toy).
The lead author of the study Rahel Marti, a doctoral student in the division of clinical psychology and animal-assisted interventions at the University of Basel in Switzerland, said:
They chose to focus their "investigations on the frontal cortex because this brain area is involved in several executive functions, such as attention, working memory, and problem-solving. But it is also involved in social and emotional processes." (CNN)
The reason behind the importance of this research is that is adds evidence to the notion of human-animal therapy interaction. This may boost "cognitive and emotional activity in the brain."
"This latest study adds to existing research on the benefits of animal-assisted therapy in medically supervised neural rehabilitation for nervous system conditions, such as strokes, seizure disorders, brain trauma and infections." (CNN)
Further work on the study needs to occur before being completely determinate. But it seems that when the humans were exposed to closer contact with the pet dogs their brain activity increased considerably.
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We found this to be quite fulfilling to learn.
Not just because it supports what we always knew, but because it helps reinforce the notion that having pets and giving and receiving love with animals, can be so therapeutic.
Image Courtesy of Pexels