How dogs love us | Dr. Gregory Berns | TEDxAtlanta

Dog brains

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. And this was just the beginning. It started 4 years ago and since then we have done many other experiments. We are still working with most of the

dogs

in the pictures. We do experiments like studying dogs' sense of smell and how the olfactory sensory system works and how they distinguish between different people and other dogs in the house through smell. Among what we concluded is the reward system, since this is activated when smelling the aroma of a known person, and even if that person was not there. This makes it clear that dogs have perceptions of our identities that remain even if we are far away when they ask me, "Do they miss us when we are away?" I will say yes because we found evidence that they remember who takes care of them, and this is related to reward responses.

Does it still have anything to do with hot dogs? The answer is that one of the things we did was repeat the experiment I showed you, when we showed two different hand signals. With a slight distortion of the experiment: we address the source of the signal. Would it be different if it were from the dog's owner or from a stranger? Or if it came from a computer? If you believe in the theory of Pavlov and all his followers, then the matter will not be very different, because any signal indicating an upcoming gift of food will be the same, if dogs and animals were simply robots.

In fact, we find the difference. The interesting thing about this is that dogs are not equal to each other. For example, Kali had a very high response in this part of the brain when the stranger and even the computer gave the signal, unlike me! (Laughter) The rest of the dogs in the project, some of them, like the laboratory dogs, have the opposite pattern. In the presence of their owners, they showed stronger brain responses. This increases our arousal because it gives us a brief glimpse. in the neurobiological signs of a dog's personality. In fact, we did a new parallel experiment that we were very excited about.

So we partnered with (Canine Enterprises for Independence). The largest dog care and training institution in the United States. What is known about these institutions is the difficulty of training them at a high cost and with a very low success rate. Only 35% of dogs pass the training program to become assistance dogs, and two-thirds of dogs end up being returned to their owners. So we partnered with this institution and they are actually training them on the exam procedures, and what we will do is try to predict which of them will be qualified to serve. I

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d this project because despite the simplicity of trying to understand what our dogs feel and know if they love us, the passion for this actually increases even more.

Dogs are very special. They are the first domestic animals and have accompanied humans since the beginning of humanity. When we look at their brains, it is almost as if we are looking back in time, to imagine the origin of this bond between man and dog. Thank you. (applause)