I like dogs a lot, this is pushing it a bit I know ( everyone I think is tired of seeing cute pix of cats and dogs on Facebook and Google Plus unless they are especially good ones)

I am also a big believer in the humane treatment of animals and such things as dog and cat rescue and the banning of "Trophy Hunting" of giraffes, rhinos, and other animals to boost the pathetic egos of rich people who have nothing better to do

Dog Behavior | first dogs in MRI scanner, finding out what they’re thinking

After training dogs to go in an M.R.I. scanner for the first time, with the goal of determining how dogs’ brains work and what they think of humans, scientist comes to inescapable conclusion: us dogs are people too.

Puppy Love: Proof Dogs Truly Madly Deeply Feel It

Ask any dog-owner and they will swear that they love their dogs and he or she loves them back, now it can be proven. Some super-smart dogs were specially trained to withstand the noise and strangeness of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine without any sedation. This way, clear scans of the dogs brains were obtained and available for study.

How Dogs Love Us-A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, training 1

Before this, assumptions about dogs thinking patterns had to be inferred from the way that they behaved. More than a dozen dogs were used in the unique research. True love and affection seem to be strongly indicated. This is no surprise to dog-lovers but it is a breakthrough for science.

Gregory Berns, from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, reasoned that if dogs could be trained to jump out of helicopters or to help the disabled to dress and care for themselves, surely they could learn to lie still in an MRI scanner. He is the Distinguished Professor of Neuroeconomics and a specialist in decision-making, but first and foremost, he is a dog lover.

first dogs in MRI scanner, finding out what they’re thinking

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He sought to come up with hard data to certify the unique bond between humans and their “best friends” was real, not imagined. His first canine candidates were Callie, a rescue dog who was nine months old, and McKenzie, a collie, aged 3. They both co-operated beautifully.

Berns employed the classic use of hand signals to indicate to the dogs when they would be receiving a food reward. By doing so, he and his assistants were soon able to see that the caudate nucleus, the area of the brain that is most associated with positive emotion, was stimulated. This is the same area that will respond to good and happy feelings for both dogs and humans.

Having established the basis for the brain reaction, Berns now wants to go on to prove that the food reward is not the only stimulus. By offering treats from both strangers and from machines, he and his team aim to show that the reaction will differ depending on who or what is proffering the food. If it were only about obtaining the nourishment, there would be no change at all in the response. He and his team intend to go on to show that the love dogs demonstrate for owners goes beyond the basics and extends to “the same things that humans love us for” such as the comforts and bonds of social interaction.

How Dogs Love Us-A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, training

His first findings have already been published in How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain. In this book he has argued that dogs have friendships akin to human ones and that they are capable of empathy and understanding.

Experiencing positive emotions, like love and attachment, gives dogs a level of sentience akin to that of a human child. However this does not quite irrevocably prove that dogs do love us back, it proves, at this stage, that the same triggers that activate the human caudate, activate the dog caudate. The hormone that goes into overdrive when we fall in love, dopamine, is rich in the caudate nucleus, and dopamine receptors respond to pleasurable things like love, food, comfort, even money, music, and beauty. All the good things in life.

Appropriately, it was a small dog, his pug, Newton, that led Berns to his quest. Newton and Berns were best buddies but, being a scientist, Berns wanted to be able to prove that Newton’s enthusiastic tail wagging and doggy kisses came from real emotion, not just from “cupboard love.” Curiously, although mankind and animals have always lived side by side, and in many cases, in great closeness, very little is really known about domestic pets and their interactions with us. Animals in the wild and in laboratories have been the subject of much closer scrutiny. Now the relatively new field of anthrozoology seeks to change that.

Our dogs, and most likely, all other animals, have emotions just like our own, and in that regard, Gregory Berns says, we should never treat them as “property.” Thinking that your dog really truly loves you is not a ridiculous idea. They may call it puppy love, and for good reason.
By Kate Henderson-

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Dogs Are People, Too

For the past two years, my colleagues and I have been training dogs to go in an M.R.I. scanner — completely awake and unrestrained. How Dogs Love Us-A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, book

How Dogs Love Us-A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, book

Our goal has been to determine how dogs’ brains work and, even more important, what they think of us humans. Now, after training and scanning a dozen dogs, my one inescapable conclusion is this: dogs are people, too.
Because dogs can’t speak, scientists have relied on behavioral observations to infer what dogs are thinking. It is a tricky business. You can’t ask a dog why he does something. And you certainly can’t ask him how he feels. The prospect of ferreting out animal emotions scares many scientists. After all, animal research is big business. It has been easy to sidestep the difficult questions about animal sentience and emotions because they have been unanswerable. Until now.

By looking directly at their brains and bypassing the constraints of behaviorism, M.R.I.’s can tell us about dogs’ internal states. M.R.I.’s are conducted in loud, confined spaces. People don’t like them, and you have to hold absolutely still during the procedure. Conventional veterinary practice says you have to anesthetize animals so they don’t move during a scan. But you can’t study brain function in an anesthetized animal. At least not anything interesting like perception or emotion.

first dogs in MRI scanner, finding out what they’re thinking, scanner

From the beginning, we treated the dogs as persons. We had a consent form, which was modeled after a child’s consent form but signed by the dog’s owner. We emphasized that participation was voluntary, and that the dog had the right to quit the study. We used only positive training methods. No sedation. No restraints. If the dogs didn’t want to be in the M.R.I. scanner, they could leave. Same as any human volunteer.

My dog Callie was the first. Rescued from a shelter, Callie was a skinny black terrier mix, what is called a feist in the southern Appalachians, from where she came. True to her roots, she preferred hunting squirrels and rabbits in the backyard to curling up in my lap. She had a natural inquisitiveness, which probably landed her in the shelter in the first place, but also made training a breeze.

With the help of my friend Mark Spivak, a dog trainer, we started teaching Callie to go into an M.R.I. simulator that I built in my living room. She learned to walk up steps into a tube, place her head in a custom-fitted chin rest, and hold rock-still for periods of up to 30 seconds. Oh, and she had to learn to wear earmuffs to protect her sensitive hearing from the 95 decibels of noise the scanner makes.
After months of training and some trial-and-error at the real M.R.I. scanner, we were rewarded with the first maps of brain activity. For our first tests, we measured Callie’s brain response to two hand signals in the scanner. In later experiments, not yet published, we determined which parts of her brain distinguished the scents of familiar and unfamiliar dogs and humans.

Soon, the local dog community learned of our quest to determine what dogs are thinking. Within a year, we had assembled a team of a dozen dogs who were all “M.R.I.-certified.”
Although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain region: the caudate nucleus.

Rich in dopamine receptors, the caudate sits between the brainstem and the cortex. In humans, the caudate plays a key role in the anticipation of things we enjoy, like food, love and money. But can we flip this association around and infer what a person is thinking just by measuring caudate activity? Because of the overwhelming complexity of how different parts of the brain are connected to one another, it is not usually possible to pin a single cognitive function or emotion to a single brain region.

But the caudate may be an exception. Specific parts of the caudate stand out for their consistent activation to many things that humans enjoy. Caudate activation is so consistent that under the right circumstances, it can predict our preferences for food, music and even beauty.
In dogs, we found that activity in the caudate increased in response to hand signals indicating food. The caudate also activated to the smells of familiar humans. And in preliminary tests, it activated to the return of an owner who had momentarily stepped out of view. Do these findings prove that dogs love us? Not quite. But many of the same things that activate the human caudate, which are associated with positive emotions, also activate the dog caudate. Neuroscientists call this a functional homology, and it may be an indication of canine emotions.

The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child. And this ability suggests a rethinking of how we treat dogs.

DOGS have long been considered property. Though the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 and state laws raised the bar for the treatment of animals, they solidified the view that animals are things — objects that can be disposed of as long as reasonable care is taken to minimize their suffering.
But now, by using the M.R.I. to push away the limitations of behaviorism, we can no longer hide from the evidence. Dogs, and probably many other animals (especially our closest primate relatives), seem to have emotions just like us. And this means we must reconsider their treatment as property.
One alternative is a sort of limited personhood for animals that show neurobiological evidence of positive emotions. Many rescue groups already use the label of “guardian” to describe human caregivers, binding the human to his ward with an implicit responsibility to care for her. Failure to act as a good guardian runs the risk of having the dog placed elsewhere. But there are no laws that cover animals as wards, so the patchwork of rescue groups that operate under a guardianship model have little legal foundation to protect the animals’ interest.

If we went a step further and granted dogs rights of personhood, they would be afforded additional protection against exploitation. Puppy mills, laboratory dogs and dog racing would be banned for violating the basic right of self-determination of a person.

I suspect that society is many years away from considering dogs as persons. However, recent rulings by the Supreme Court have included neuroscientific findings that open the door to such a possibility. In two cases, the court ruled that juvenile offenders could not be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. As part of the rulings, the court cited brain-imaging evidence that the human brain was not mature in adolescence. Although this case has nothing to do with dog sentience, the justices opened the door for neuroscience in the courtroom.
Perhaps someday we may see a case arguing for a dog’s rights based on brain-imaging findings.
By Gregory Berns

Gregory Berns is a professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University and the author of “How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain.” Beach Bums Realty has beach house for sale santa monica ca, home for sale santa monica beach, and beach condo for sale santa monica ca. Beach Bums Realty can also provide ocean front condo for sale santa monica beach ca, santa monica beach house for sale, santa monica beach condos for sale, and santa monica real estate for sale.