Regional brain activations in awake unrestrained dogs

Abstract

Due to its accessibility, tractability, evolutionary history, and social intelligence, the domestic dog is increasingly used as a model animal in behavioral studies. While this has led to new insights into canine cognition, understanding of dog brain function has not advanced apace. Practical and ethical concerns have limited the use of the invasive brain imaging techniques typically used with primate and rodent models. Now, with the advent of awake, unrestrained canine fMRI (Berns, Brooks & Spivak, 2012), data can be obtained on brain function during passive reception of stimuli and even during active decision making. Such data have already proven useful for linking brain regions with particular cognitive functions, illuminating canine socioemotional processes, and grounding behavioral observations of phenotypic variability in a neural substrate. Future studies may shed new light on brain networks and neural dysfunction in dogs, and will likely bear relevance for clinical practitioners, dog trainers, and comparative psychologists and neuroscientists. This brief review discusses prior dog imaging work; addresses the practical and technical hurdles to awake, unrestrained dog imaging; and discusses the current state of the science.

Awake fMRI Reveals Brain Regions for Novel Word Detection in Dogs

“…Thus, even though all the dogs were cleared for scanning by reaching performance criterion, they may have used different mechanisms to process the words. Like our previous fMRI studies, heterogeneity seems to be the rule ( Cook et al, 2016a , b ). Even so, the accuracy of the classifier was not correlated with a dog’s performance.…”

“…Since 2012, pet dogs have been trained using positive reinforcement to lie still during fMRI scans in order to explore a variety of aspects of canine cognition ( Berns et al, 2012 , 2013 ). These studies have furthered our understanding of the dog’s neural response to expected reward, identified specialized areas in the dog brain for processing faces, observed olfactory responses to human and dog odors, and linked prefrontal function to inhibitory control ( Cook et al, 2014 , 2016a ; Berns et al, 2015 ; Dilks et al, 2015 ; Cuaya et al, 2016 ). In one fMRI study, dogs listened to human and dog vocalizations through headphones and showed differential activation within regions of the temporal and parietal cortex ( Andics et al, 2014 ).…”

Spontaneous dog osteoarthritis — a One Medicine vision

“…Many other tests could be useful in OA monitoring, including thermal imaging and mechanical nociceptive threshold testing 178,179 . Functional activity monitoring, force plate analysis and advanced MRI are performed on dogs in a manner that mirrors their use in human patients, and brain imaging in conscious pet dogs is also reliable and practical and could potentially be used for comparative neuroscience studies 180,181 .…”

Training pet dogs for eye-tracking and awake fMRI

“…So far, five independent research groups-two in the USA (Atlanta, GA, and Auburn, AL), one in Mexico (Querétaro), and two in Europe (Budapest, Hungary, and Vienna, Austria)-have captured brain images of nonsedated and largely unrestrained dogs, and their work and publications indicate the interest in and the importance of this new frontier in functional neuroimaging (see Andics & Miklósi, 2018;Bunford, Andics, Kis, Miklósi, & Gácsi, 2017;Cook, Brooks, Spivak, & Berns, 2016;Huber & Lamm, 2017;and Thompkins et al, 2016, for reviews). Starting with studies on reward processing (Berns et al, 2012;Berns, Brooks, & Spivak, 2013;Berns, Brooks, Spivak, & Levy, 2017;Cook, Spivak, & Berns, 2014), subsequent studies investigated the default mode network (Kyathanahally et al, 2015), olfactory processing (Berns, Brooks, & Spivak, 2015;Jia et al, 2014;Jia et al, 2015), face processing (Cuaya, Hernández-Pérez, & Concha, 2016;Dilks et al, 2015;Thompkins et al, 2018), response inhibition , auditory processing (human and dog vocalizations: Andics, Gácsi, Faragó, Kis, & Miklósi, 2014;human words: Andics et al, 2016;Prichard, Cook, Spivak, Chhibber, & Berns, 2018), and emotion processing ("jealousy"; ; human emotional faces: Hernández-Pérez, Concha, & Cuaya, 2018).…”