interview
Tell Us What You Really Think Susan Nilson and Angelica Steinker speak to Dr. Gregory Berns about the significance of olfactory and visual stimuli in a dog’s universe and what dogs may really be thinking
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mongst dog trainers and enthusiasts, Dr. Gregory Berns is proba bly best known for his pioneering work that specializes in the use of brain imaging technologies to gain a greater understanding of canine motivation and decisionmaking. For the last three years, Berns’ team at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia have used positive rein forcement to train a group of volunteer dogs to remain still during func tional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)*. As the dogs are awake during the entire fMRI process, Berns and his colleagues are provided with vital information as they work to decode what dogs are really thinking. The data they have collected, and continue to collect, reveals intriguing insights about how the canine brain works. In the study, (Prichard, Chhibber, Athanassiades, Spivak, & Berns, 2018), Berns and his team used awake fMRI in 19 dogs over a series of three experiments to measure rewardrelated learning of visual, olfac tory, and verbal stimuli. They found that visual and olfactory associa tions “resulted in the fastest learning, while verbal stimuli were least effective, suggesting that verbal [cues] may be the least efficient way to train dogs.” The researchers explain that, “[a]lthough dogs may attend to verbal stimuli, olfactory and visual stimuli likely have greater impor tance in the dog’s assessment of its physical and social environment and when interacting within such environments” and that their results, “showing greater salience for olfactory and visual stimuli in the amyg dala, are concordant with the dogs’ behavioral preferences in their nat ural surroundings.” (Berns et al., 2018). Given the human propensity for verbal communication, we were interested to find out Dr. Berns’ views about whether training protocols based on verbal cues, while “optimal for humans,” may not – from a dog’s perspective – necessarily be the most effective way to learn. © Emory University
Verbal vs. Visual BARKS: What are the implications of the study’s findings for dog train‐ ers, given that verbal cues, typically, are currently a mainstay of dog training? Gregory Berns: We found that olfactory and visual associations – as measured by changes in brain activation – occurred with fewer repeti tions than verbal ones. The olfactory preference should come as no sur prise, but the visual over verbal preference suggests that the use of verbal cues may be more for the human’s benefit than the dog’s. Of course, most people use visual signals in conjunction with verbal cues, and that may be the best route. BARKS: What about human‐canine communication in general – should we be trying to re‐evaluate the way we communicate with dogs, given
“...it is possible that a dog may be paying attention to a person’s hands because they expect something to be dispensed, and this could interfere with learning something unrelated. In this case, a neutral object could serve as a bridge.” - Dr. Gregory Berns
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BARKS from the Guild/March 2020
Dr. Gregory Berns (above) is fascinated by what dogs understand from human language: “Do words have meaning to them?, he asks. “If I say ‘ball’ do they picture a ball in their mind?”
the human preference for verbal communication? How can we capitalize on this research to make our training more efficient and improve our communication with the dog? GB: Humans are verbal creatures, and although we talk to our dogs, that does not mean they understand what we’re saying, at least not like we understand each other. When it comes to verbal communication, the brain research is showing that although dogs can learn to discrimi nate certain sounds and some words, their mental representation of what the words mean may be quite different than ours. For example, humans are very nouncentric. We name everything. Dogs, however, may have very little use of nouns. Instead, they may be verb or action centric. So, when they hear “ball” they may actually think, “get ball.” Be cause dogs do not have the neural real estate for language processing, it is imperative that humans use their words concisely and consistently for dogs to understand them. Speak the dog’s name, followed by a one or twoword cue. Anything more than that is a distraction and will only serve to slow down learning. I think that there is growing evidence that there may be critical peri ods of learning for dogs. They are more apt to learn verbal cues (or any
