A little research into the brain waves of man’s best friend has shown that dogs can understand that some words refer to objects in the same way that humans do.

The fact that our four-legged friends can recognize words such as “sit” or “fetch” does not surprise dog owners. But a new study that analyzed the brain activity of 18 dogs provides evidence that they don’t just recognize words associated with actions, but can “activate” a memory of an object when they hear its name.

The research was conducted at the Ethwos Lorand University in Budapest and published in the journal Current Biology.

“The ability of a non-human animal to understand words referentially has been debated for a long time,” says Marianna Boros, one of the study’s authors.

“While there have been reports of such behavior, they have always been exceptional cases. Our study is the first to argue that this is a species-level ability,” she added.

During the study, dog owners called out words for objects that the animals knew. Then, in some cases, they presented the dog with an object that corresponded to the word, and in others – a different object.

Hungarian researchers found that dogs’ brain waves look different in these two situations, something that can also be seen in the human brain.

“Dogs can understand that words are meant for certain things (…), so they activate mental representations and associate the meaning of the word with the mental representation, not just the context,” explains Boros.

The researchers plan to continue studying whether this mental orienting ability is unique to dogs or is also present in other mammals.