[Nfbf-l] New York Times article on dog MRI

[Alan Dicey]

New York Times article on dog MRI
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html

The New York Times
 October 5, 2013
 Dogs Are People, Too
 By GREGORY BERNS
 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. 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.

 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.

 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."


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