What It's Like To Be A Dog And Other Adventures In Animal Neuroscience
Do you have a dog? I grew up surrounded by Newfoundlanders. E'er wondered what they are thinking? Whether they think at all? You'd exist forgiven for thinking that What Information technology's Like to Exist a Dog is some other book for dog lovers and, in part, it is. Simply don't permit the title mislead you, this book is primarily a popular account of ongoing developments in animate being neuroscience, specifically on what scanning mammal brains using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can tell us well-nigh our shared similarities.
Humans are forever curious about what is going on within the heads of their canine companions and at that place is no shortage of books trying to respond the question what it is like to be a dog (for instance Horowitz'south Inside of a Canis familiaris: What Dogs See, Odor and Know ; Hare & Woods'south The Genius of Dogs: Discovering the Unique Intelligence of Man's All-time Friend ; Coppinger & Feinstein's fairly scholarly How Dogs Work ; or Bekoff'southward Canine Confidential: Why Dogs Practise What They Do ). Unsurprisingly, a lot of authors specifically write about the dog's amazing sense of smell (for example Warren's What the Domestic dog Knows: Odor, Science, and the Astonishing Means Dogs Perceive the World ; Horowitz's Being a Canis familiaris: Following the Dog into a World of Olfactory property ; or Rosell'due south Secrets of the Snout: The Domestic dog's Incredible Nose ).
American neuroscientist Gregory Berns stepped into this crowded field with a radical idea: can we use MRI scanners to see what is happening in the brain of a dog? If you've ever been in a hospital to have an MRI scan, you will know that yous have to lie still inside of a large and noisy machine while the scans are made. How exercise you lot get a dog to exercise this without sedating or restraining it, which would defeat the setup of your experiment? Having seen military dogs in action, Berns was convinced that dogs tin can exist trained to voluntarily cooperate. His initial work with his dog Callie was described for a full general audience in How Dogs Beloved U.s.: A Neuroscientist and His Dog Decode the Canine Brain .
" […] Berns [had] a radical thought: can we employ MRI scanners to see what is happening in the encephalon of a dog?"
Meanwhile, Berns has not rested on his laurels and has trained up a pack of dogs. Mixing descriptions of research in human neuroscience with his own experiments, Berns takes the reader through some of their methods and findings. Using experimental protocols previously used in trials on humans (e.g. measuring self-control), Berns quickly institute that analogous regions in dog brains are agile during these tasks. Berns argues that these analogies matter. If action in a certain part of the encephalon is linked with certain behaviours in humans, and y'all see comparable brain activeness and behaviour in dogs, you lot are on safer ground to debate that dogs are having comparable experiences to us.
Continuing to push the envelope, Berns has ventured beyond dogs, and this is where the subtitle of the book comes in. The reader is introduced to the report of neural connections betwixt unlike brain regions, or connectomics (encounter also Seung'southward Connectome: How the Encephalon'due south Wiring Makes Us Who We Are ), and the MRI technique used to study it, diffusion tensor imaging or DTI. Using this, Berns has studied the brains of deceased body of water lions, dolphins, and even the extinct thylacine or Tasmanian tiger. His work on dolphins brains, showing that the wiring betwixt the auditory and visual regions of the brain is similar to that in humans – which runs counter to textbook noesis so far – is fascinating. Perchance echolocation is not so conflicting to usa after all. His efforts to become access to the rare few thylacine encephalon specimens are a thrilling adventure.
Berns spends quite some pages on the arguments of those who disagree. There are philosophers and scientists who are not convinced that the reductionist arroyo of neuroscience will bring u.s.a. whatsoever closer to understanding what some other creature feels, as we can never fully admission those internal experiences. Berns disagrees – information technology is through this reductionist approach he has shown that the brains of many mammals are similarly wired, and reply in a similar fashion to those of humans. Nosotros are probably non that different after all. From an evolutionary viewpoint this seems self-axiomatic, I would add. Even Darwin idea the deviation in our minds is ane of degree, not of kind. There are limitations though, as Berns also concedes when discussing language. I don't expect meaningful conversation across the species barrier anytime soon, or perhaps e'er.
" […] what is the point of whatsoever of this research, across a bunch of scientists getting to play with their MRI-toys?"
Possibly you take and then far wondered what the betoken of any of this enquiry is, beyond a bunch of scientists getting to play with their MRI-toys. Bonus points therefore for Berns highlighting the relevance of his inquiry in the last chapter. The similarities betwixt human and other mammalian brains in both function and structure make a stiff case in favour of animals experiencing joy, pain, or social interactions much like we practice. We may not have quite cracked the matter of cocky-awareness, but that seems simply a matter of fourth dimension and technical advances. This kind of inquiry should further influence and inform how we treat animals, whether pets or livestock.
In places, Berns throws in perhaps just a bit too much brain terminology. Non beingness a neuroscientist myself, I would have welcomed some schematic pictures of brains to help me place the names of all the brain regions. That minor quibble aside, What Information technology's Like to Be a Dog is a well written and engaging account of the cut-edge and unorthodox neuroscientific research Berns and others take been involved in, and is a book that should appeal far beyond an audience of canis familiaris owners.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed hither is my own, withal.
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Source: https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2018/04/20/book-review-what-its-like-to-be-a-dog-and-other-adventures-in-animal-neuroscience/
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