According to a new study, dog owners actually love their pets in almost the same way they love their own children. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital monitored the brain activity of 14 women study subjects.

According to a new study, dog owners love their pets in almost the same way they love their children.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital monitored the brain activity of 14 female study subjects who were all mothers to at least one child.

They scanned the subjects using fMRI imaging while showing them pictures of their own children or dogs and compared that data to how they reacted to pictures of unfamiliar babies and dogs.

According to the study, "There was a common network of brain regions involved in emotion, reward, affiliation, visual processing and social cognition when mothers viewed images of both their child and dog."

The same brain activity didn’t happen while looking at pictures of strangers' babies or dogs.

There were some differences in brain activity between the pictures of pets and children too.

For example, the region of the brain associated with facial recognition was more active while looking at a picture of their dog, while the midbrain was more active when the mothers were shown a picture of their child.

This indicates to experts that these areas of the brain might be important for significant emotional connections.

Researchers say their follow up studies will have a larger group of subjects that include both men and women.