Oxytocin improves the ability of dogs to follow informative pointing: a neuroemotional hypothesis

It has been suggested that dogs’ ability to comprehend human pointing gestures evolved as a by-product of the socio-emotional changes associated with domestication. Given the large role played by the oxytocin system in socio-emotional processes, it is possible to hypothesize a role for oxytocin in modulating dogs’ socio-communicative skills. Indeed, it has been shown that intranasal oxytocin enhances dogs’ ability to use human pointing cues in an object choice task, a classic paradigm used to assess the ability to follow a pointing gesture. We further tested this hypothesis in another sample of dogs and replicated the above findings. We also provided a novel explanation to the above findings, suggesting that oxytocin released during human–dog interactions increases the positive expectations about human behaviour via emotion and reward processes and thus facilitates the interpretation of pointing as leading to positive events. Given the large and deep homology across mammals in the neural mechanisms involved in emotions, oxytocin could be involved in the acquisition of socio-communicative skills during human typical as well as pathological development.