7. Week. Reading Blog

What fMRI Can Tell Us About the Thoughts and Minds of Dogs

  

Autor, A.A Joseph Stromberg — Biology,Mammals,Psychology (November 1, 2013)

Name of the Article: What fMRI Can Tell Us About the Thoughts and Minds of Dogs

Name of Magazine: Smithsonian (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/11/what-fmri-can-tell-us-about-the-thoughts-and-minds-of-dogs/)

 

Pilar and Kathy are friends, are meeting in the park as every week. But now, they are walking their dogs.
Kathy	Hello Pilar, How are you? Is beautiful your dog!!! What’s its name?
Pilar	Hi Kathy, fine! And you? Its name is Kevin, Is beautiful your dog too, What’s its name?
Kathy	Its name is Ralphi, I love him so much because he knows all my life and he feels the same as I.
Pilar	Really! Kevin is the same as Ralphi, they understand of all animal life and human life too. Their brain is a mysterious.
Kathy	Is true! But now is less mysterious, because neuroscientist Gregory Berns who studied the human mind using fMRI technology and who sought to find correlations between people’s internal mental patterns and their real-world behaviors, decisions and preferences, now is studying about the thoughts and minds of dogs.
Pilar	Really? I cant believe!
Kathy	You must to believe! You can see the article in Smithsonian published on November 1, 2013.
Pilar	It’s wonderful!. Do you can talk more about it?  What does “fMRI” means?
Kathy	Yes, I do. fMRI means Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI). Berns loves the animals and when his dog died, named Newton, he thought about study dogs. He had published the book “How Dogs Love Us” last week and he said: “It got me  wondering about how dogs view their relationship with us—if he had loved me the same way I had loved him.” This was a formidable challenge for Berns because for looking inside the canine brain and getting an accurate fMRI reading means that the subject has to stay almost perfectly still.
Pilar	Wuau! How was possible to do it? Did they use anesthesia for the dog stays still?  I don't like the experiments with animals! Do you believe that this is abuse?
Kathy	Yes, I do. In this case they don’t use anesthesia because this would ruin the experiments, producing an image of an unconscious or anxious dog instead of a comfortable, alert one, besides, Berns loves the animals, he thinks that they have the same rights as us.
Pilar	Then, How did he do?
Kathy	To solve the problem, Berns recruited dogs from the local community, stanting with a dog he adopted after Newton died and he gradually trained them to follow a series of steps into a table, rest their head on a pad inside the fMRI's inner tunnel and sit still for 30 seconds, so that scientist can scan his brain, besides, removing all noise that could disturb the dogs. You can see this picture in my smartphone. They have successfully trained about a dozen dogs to voluntarily for to be studied.
Pilar	And What did they find?
Kathy	Now the studies are preliminary but they're finding that its activity mirrors that of the human brain to a much greater than expected. They found unexpected findings, experimenting with dogs sited in the scanner and exposed to smells of humans (from either their owners or strangers) and other dogs. Berns says "We wanted to understand how dogs recognize other people and dogs in their households,” they saw increased activity in the caudate, but only as result of one of the scents. “In this case, the reward system only seems to activate in response to the smell of a familiar human, which is pretty amazing,” he says. For Berns these results, in some ways, say that the mental processes of dogs, don't could to be as different from those of humans, because the mental activity represents emotion, and even constitute love. Berns believes that the dogs are experiencing emotions something like we do.
Pilar	What does it mean? Do you say that the human brain and canine brain aren't radically different as we might have imagined?
Kathy	Yes, I do. Berns admits that the idea is controversial.  Besides, because dog brains are much smaller, however some of the core areas around the brainstem, which the caudate nucleus, look very much like those in humans, besides Berns says that the Dogs not have the hardware necessary for complex thoughts and higher-level reasoning, but they do have the relevant structures for basic emotions. This could to be for an evolution different, he says.
Pilar	I believe that Berns have a lot of criticisms, because some say that the dogs are based on the desire for food.
Kathy	Is true!, Berns have a lot of criticisms, but he hopes to respond with future fMRI work. Besides he has gone beyond, because he believes that if the animals are capable of have emotions as the humans, they should not be treated as objects, or property, instead be give some of the rights, namely a respect for their preference and well-being and consequently the abolition of thing like puppy mills and dog racing.
Pilar	Surprising! This is really provocative for many
Kathy	This is a long way to go, both in terms of scientific evidence and policy changes. Berns published this month in New York Times a provocative headline "Dogs Are People, Too".
Pilar	Really provocative. Do you talk me about it?
Kathy	I would like, but it’s late for me.
Pilar	Ok, but we can meet the next week and continue talking about this new article.
Kathy	Ok, see you next week.
Pilar	Good bye