There have been studies (will update if I find link again) that show that people who care for dogs have lower levels of anxiety. Even "lending" a dog for a few hours per week already had this effect.
There have been preliminary experiments intended to answer this question. I remember one of them involved administering oxytocin as some sort of spray. I can't remember if these trials were in animals or humans.
One of the hypothesized effects of increasing oxytocin levels is making people with autistic minds think and behave in more typical ways. If this comes to fruition, I hope that autistic people will be able to help decide whether they become more typical or not.
Because it's not well understood (and may be very powerful), a widely-used oxytocin-increasing drug seems to be quite a few years away.
My dog has to have eye surgery on Thursday. She is a 5 year old rottweiler. That has nothing to do with the article, but please give her your best wishes, her name is Ruby.
Also, I heard somewhere and repeat often that some dogs have human eyes in a dog body.
