Look at him: so relaxed, so comfortable… sleeping soundly in his beautiful Versailles removable-cover bed (or in any of the other perfect beds we have at ARISTOSHOP). Watching your dog sleep is one of life’s little pleasures. Even more so than watching your partner sleep, because you don’t run the risk of them waking up, catching you watching them, and getting the wrong idea… Sometimes you may wonder whether they take it a little too far (with their paws, sorry) because athey spend almost more time sleeping each day than awake… But the truth is that after reading what we’re about to tell you, you’ll never look at your dog the same way while he sleeps.
According to a study conducted by a team of Hungarian scientists, dogs can learn while they sleep. The study focused on analyzing the cognitive abilities of ARISTODOGS and revealed that they can learn while snoring away in dreamland.
On this occasion, 15 dogs took part in the experiment. Before going to sleep, the scientists taught them certain commands in English —rather than Hungarian, the language they were familiar with. The scientists performed electroencephalograms on the dogs to analyze their brain activity during sleep (no less than a three-hour nap). And what a surprise it was when they detected “sleep spindles” in the electroencephalograms of the furry ones.
Sleep spindles, also called sigma rhythm, are sinusoidal waves characteristic of the second stage of non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) or synchronized sleep. They are generated in the thalamus and cerebral cortex and consist of bursts of ten to sixteen Hz, lasting between 0.5 and two seconds. This phenomenon is believed to be related to various functions, such as memory consolidation, learning, aging, and intelligence in general.
This means that, as in humans and rodents, dogs’ brains are developing cognitive activity while they sleep, which implies that they may be learning during their sleep. Just as with humans, the females had more bursts per minute than the males. In fact, around 30% of the females learned the new words, compared with around 10% of the males.
Without a doubt, it changes your perspective, doesn’t it? Now we won’t think that our dogs spend all day sleeping… because they may be processing what happened to them during the day or absorbing things they saw or heard. So this study is not only intended to help us better understand what goes on in dogs’ minds and brains (and never has that been more literally true), but also in our own.
Knowing, moreover, that our ARISTODOGS have approximately 530 million cortical neurons and that these determine the richness of their internal mental state, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to think that our furry best friends are animal kingdom brainiacs, does it?
If you’d like to learn about other interesting studies on ARISTODOGS’ intelligence, we invite you to discover why your dog understands what you say and how you say it. You’re sure to be surprised!