For years scientists have told us the bond between a pet and its owner goes no further than their need for food and security.

But new research suggests what dog owners knew all along – that they do in fact experience feelings of love and affection.

Scientists at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, discovered that a part of the brain associated with positive emotions, was similar in dogs and humans.

For years scientists have told us the bond between a pet and its owner goes no further than their need for food and security. But new research suggests what dog owners knew all along--that they do in fact experience feelings of love and affection

The team trained more than a dozen dogs to cope with noisy magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, enabling them to sit still within a scanner to get clear images of their brains without sedating them.

Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist who initially worked with a dog trainer to teach Callie, a nine-month-old rescue dog, and McKenzie, a three-year-old collie, to lie in a MRI machine, said: ‘We can really begin to understand what a dog is thinking rather than infer it from their behaviour.

‘I thought that if military dogs can be trained to jump out of helicopters then surely we could train them to sit still inside an MRI scanner.’

Using hand signals to indicate the dogs were about to receive a food treat, Berns and his team showed that the caudate nucleus, a part of the brain associated with positive emotions, was similar in dogs and humans.

In the next part of their research, they will analyse brain scans from dogs offered treats by strangers and machines.

‘If, as many scientists have argued in the past, it is all simply about [getting] food for dogs then the reaction in their brains would be the same no matter who or what is offering them the food,’ said Berns,

‘We hope to show that they love us for things far beyond food, basically the same things that humans love us for, like social comfort and social bonds.’

His initial findings were published last year in a book called How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain.

In it he uses his findings to argue that dogs do indeed empathise with human emotions and experience friendships in a similar way to humans.