Peering into a dog’s brain, researchers like neuroscientist Gregory Berns can see how it reacts to stimuli such as hand signals, sounds and smells. Activity in the reward center can show whether dogs prefer human affection over food, and which ones may not be fit for duty as service dogs.
Source: National Geographic, September 2017.
Berns launched the Dog Project at Emory University, which was the first to teach dogs to lie still without sedation in an MRI scanner so their brains can be studied. Now Berns wants to know how dogs learn human language: “When a dog hears a word, is it just an auditory stimulus, or does it go deeper to have some sort of meaning?”