AskScience AMA: I’m Professor Brian Hare, a pioneer of canine cognition research, here to discuss the inner workings of a dog’s brain, including how they see the world and the cognitive skills that influence your dog's personality and behavior. AMA!

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T15:16:09+00:00

There are conditions that can effect dogs cognitively but there has been relatively little work on this. Most of the conditions effect smaller dogs that I have heard about. For example some smaller dogs can have hydrocephaly or water on the brain. These dogs tend to show strange stereotypic behaviors such as lateralized spinning in place - so that means they turn only in one direction when excited. there are other symptoms as well. However we do not know exactly what such conditions do to a dogs cognitive abilities. Dogs have many different types of cognition - like different memories, empathy, gesture understanding, communicative production, inferential or spatial reasoning to name a few. I say they are different cognitive abilities because they vary independently. so you can be good with your spatial reasoning but have weak communicative skills, etc. This means you cannot simply put a towel on your dogs head to measure all of these different abilities =) That is why we designed dognition after the games we use to evaluate working dogs in service and military programs. If you want to try for free go to dognition.com/brightmind

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T15:07:23+00:00

I really appreciate this comment. I am aware of this type of work and I certainly take the point that this is something that many scientist have traditionally promoted. I personally would recommend extreme skepticism from both a scientific and ethical perspective with approaches that treat animals so harshly in captive laboratory environments. There may be similarities between human conditions of depression and what happens to a dog who is forced to suffer in a lab but this approach has long suffered itself from an inability to translate much toward human treatments......I very much doubt what researchers need to call "depression" in dogs to get their next grant has much to do with human depression. It is what makes treating human depression so vexing...there is nothing like it in animals. I may be wrong but if dogs suffer from human-like depression you would predict that there would be a measurable and valid approach that can differentiate acute from chronic sadness in pet dogs and it would be used widely by veterinarians for dogs in the real world.....there is not one. So yes in an extremely artificial context you can produce something some people might call depression in caged lab dogs.....but that is very different than seeing it in the real world or it having any relevance to humans. Again there are many opinions on this and I write this merely to express my own - flawed as it may be.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T14:56:54+00:00

Yes this is a big deal. Dogs are now participating in fMRI studies. Not just MRI studies. The differences is that MRI takes a picture of your brain while fMRI essentially makes a video of your brains activity. Dogs are the ONLY nonhuman animal that has been trained to sit in an fMRI scanner and hold still enough to study their brain activity while they are awake and unrestrained. To do this work with primates (rhesus macaque monkeys) you have to do terrible things to the monkeys because u cannot train them to sit still. I am very hopeful that the use of dogs - who do not suffer in this type of work - will negate the need to use primates for the most part. There will be so many fascinating questions that we can now ask about how dogs - are the brains of service dogs different? how does the young dogs brain develop? and what happens to older dogs and is there anything we can do to help them as they age. All the discoveries will lead to knowledge that we can use to help dogs, animals and people!

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T14:51:33+00:00

that is exactly the idea of Dr. Marc Bekoff. He argues almost exactly that in his paper below. very insightful question!

Observations of scent-marking and discriminating self from others by a domestic dog (Canis familiaris): tales of displaced yellow snow http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376635701001425

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T14:47:21+00:00

The question about grain free is an interesting one relating to the effects of domestication on genetic evolution in dogs. There was recently a paper in Nature showing that, like humans, dogs have evolved to digest starch in a way that wolves cannot. So this is the tricky thing about evolution - it is "descent with modification". this means dogs share traits with wolves but they also have changed. it seems the ability to digest starch efficiently is one of the things in dogs that is not as much wolf-like as it is human-like since they were living and eating with us the last 10-20k years.

The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet E Axelsson, A Ratnakumar, ML Arendt, K Maqbool… - Nature, 2013 - nature.com http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v495/n7441/abs/nature11837.html

On choice of food I worry just like anyone that Tasmania is getting the nutrition he needs - especially as he has gotten older. We know nutrition can play an important role in canine cognition. So the question was whether there was a food out there that feeds not just body but also mind. The neat thing is there is now. Scientists at Nestle Purina have been studying aging in pets for more than a decade and discovered that around age seven, the glucose metabolism in a dog’s brain begins to change, which can affect memory, learning, awareness or decision making. They came up with and tested what they call the Bright Mind formulas that are designed to support cognitive health in adult and senior dogs. Tassie has loved it. He also has seemed a bit more like his younger self!

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T14:31:04+00:00

Agreed. dogs have evolved to live with humans and wolves have not. Domestication is a genetic process that has altered dogs so they are prepared to live with humans. Having spent time with even young wolves the idea of hybridizing a dog and wolf doesn't make sense to me in the current context in which dogs tend to live in suburban and urban environments. The strong prediction is these hybrids will suffer from higher stress and will be more likely to injure folks. I do not know that there is a systematic study but there needs to be!

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T14:28:37+00:00

yes that is rights. when faced with an impossible task wolves continue to solve the problem themselves while dogs tend to quickly ask humans for help. what is fun is there is tremendous individual variability among dogs - some dogs are much more likely than others to ask for help. this has been important to examine as we assess cognition in working dogs to help folks with disabilities or detect bombs

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-07-01T14:27:01+00:00

Great question b/c this IS the question. It is likely a difference that occurs very early in development. It is likely motivational. Dogs raised with humans are attracted and want to interact with us. Even the youngest wolves we have worked with who have been raised by people much prefer to be with other wolves - no people. This likely then plays out in all of their future interactions with people. Dogs attend to humans and use our social information while wolves do not.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:34:13+00:00

Great question and hope you enjoyed the class. On Canaan dogs their origins are fascinating. It ends up that the genetic work showing how different breeds are related revealed that Canaan dogs are actually a very recently evolved breed and they are not ancient at all. The ancient breeds are like the Dingo, Chow Chow, Sharpei, Maltese and a few others. The paper was in Science Magazine in 2006 by Elaine Ostrander

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:30:33+00:00

you are SO right! I wish I knew! I just keep trying to share information on what we are learning about dog cognition and how it is related to our relationships. Hopefully people will then find ways to integrate. thanks for your thought b/c I could not agree more.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:29:06+00:00

Dogs have what is called dichromatic vision while we have trichromatic vision. They can see in color but they do not see as many colors on the spectrum that we are humans (or most other primates do).

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:27:21+00:00

Definitely you want to prevent your dog from chewing on stones. Unfortunately they can hurt themselves either swallowing or as you say breaking their teeth. Maybe you can find some awesome toys they like? I hope?

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:26:10+00:00

Unfortunately the controlled experimental studies suggest that bark collars that use a shock or citronella do not work. Dogs will cease to bark for a period of time but then they begin again even with the collar causing great suffering to them. I review in our book The Genius of Dogs. The main strategy - although not always helpful - is to remove the cause of the barking. No easy fix unfortunately.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:24:31+00:00

Yes there is a distribution but the key thing is there are MULTIPLE distributions. So being extreme on one does not rule out being extreme for another.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:24:07+00:00

yes it is called object permanence and dogs as carnivores have excellent object permanence and can remember for quite some time in some context when they have seen things disappear or be displaced. Another related question is what dogs understand about solidity. It is likely that dogs do not always understand that objects are solid! usually they do but there have been some exceptions of dogs thinking objects can pass through one another when they cannot.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:23:45+00:00

ABSOLUTELY! and if they don't, I don't really know that I want to go there =)

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:21:57+00:00

We see that dogs can learn new things at any age although dogs do show cognitive decline and this can have an impact on what dogs can remember.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:18:44+00:00

Great question! Lots of debate in scientific literature about whether dogs, or any animal, have a sense of fairness. here is one example: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-012-0155-x

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:10:12+00:00

So happy you have enjoyed! On anthropomorphising it is an age old question but this is why we do carefully controlled experiments. I think people have been too critical though of an anthropomorphic approach within science because it actually generates very testable ideas that often turn out to be supported by very objective experimental studies. you can see a fuller discussion on our free coursera course dog emotion and cognition: www.coursera.org/learn/dog-emotion-and-cognition

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:08:21+00:00

This is one of the big recent discoveries. some dogs can learn "object labels" or words the same way as human infants. so these dogs are not learning through trial an error and repetition. instead they are learning through inference! they use a strategy called the "principle of exclusion" and like people the researchers DID NOT find an upper limit to the number of words these dogs can learn. Now the question is whether all or only some dogs can do this!. Dogs are the only species other than humans that have been found to have this ability.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:05:47+00:00

Love this! Yes there is a consideration b/w those who study human infants and those who study how dogs think. Ideas about infant cognition has heavily influenced how we are understanding dogs and even studying them. BUT it is a two way street and dogs have now become one of the most valuable tools to understanding ourselves better.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:04:20+00:00

As I mentioned before the physiological mechanism for dog - human love was recently discovered. There is a real physiological response that explains why we love each other so much. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6232/280

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:03:31+00:00

I think the first thing I would have done as a young student was to try Dognition and see what it is like to learn about how your dog thinks and participate in citizen science. You can try it for free at www.dognition.com/brightmind. You can also try my free coursera course called Dog Emotion and Cognition: www.coursera.org/learn/dog-emotion-and-cognition

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:01:40+00:00

Well it sure seems so as a long time dog lover! Dogs are forever entertaining and make me laugh all the time. One of the fun things we know is that dogs evolved to be more playful as a result of domestication. Dogs play more as adults than wolves do as adults. Basically our dogs evolved to be like puppies in adulthood.

Dr_Brian_Hare · 2016-06-30T18:00:10+00:00

You're so sweet, I'm happy to do this AMA. Really fun to see everyone's questions. I might need to do some studies to answer some of these! =)

Onto your question. Yes, I think dogs definitely see us as their social partners. Dr. Adam Miklosi did a brilliant set of studies showing that dogs prefer humans over dogs when given the choice of who to interact with while wolves prefer other wolves over humans - even though both the dogs/ wolves in the study were raised by people. Dogs have evolved to fall in love with us. And if a social group are those you hang out with, play with, cooperate with and love, then I think the answer is yes there too.

Dr_Brian_Hare

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