TRENDS
Sit, Stay, Speak.
Can AI and other emerging technologies help us
peek inside the minds of animals?
BY BETSY VERECKEY
06
Do dogs have feelings? That’s the million-dollar question
that canine cognitive scientists have been and praise, and, when he examined how the
trying to answer for years. Now, with the rewards center of a dog’s brain responded to
help of artificial intelligence (AI) and other both food and praise on the MRI film, he saw
emerging technologies, researchers are
that most dogs responded to both equally.
learning that man’s best friend—and plenty of Berns says that the response to praise is
other species—can experience a wide array of significant because it “suggests that dogs
emotions, just like us. Here’s a look at how a have similar emotional responses as we do, but
few of these innovations are helping us unlock don’t have the language to describe it.”
the secret languages of the animal kingdom in “Over and over, we have been finding that
new and fascinating ways.
regions in the dogs’ brains that are the same
as those regions in humans’ brains respond
HOT DOGS = PRAISE
similarly,” he says. “The reward areas of both
Yes, your dog may be happy when dinnertime dogs and humans respond to things like food
rolls around, but what your dog actually loves and praise.”
as much as his kibble is you, according to MRI So, while man’s best friend can’t speak
brain imaging studies performed on dogs by human languages (not yet, at least), technology
Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory can perhaps help us better relate to our beloved
University.
canines. “Increasingly, we are applying the
In his study, which involved eight years same techniques used in human neuroscience
of preparation, Berns slid dogs into an MRI research—such as machine learning and
machine without sedation or restraint. He brain-decoding algorithms—to read out neural
alternated between giving them hot dogs fingerprints from dogs,” Berns says.
PHOTO BY DUSTIN CHAMBERS/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX