Gregory Berns Knows What Your Dog Is Thinking (It’s Sweet)
The sea lions taught me that consciousness disorders in animals can look very similar to consciousness disorders in people.
As a neuroscientist, I’d seen how M. R.I.
studies helped us understand which parts of the human brain were involved in emotional processes.
The big impediment doing this type of testing was to find some way to get dogs into an M. R.I.
and get them to hold still for long enough to obtain useful images.
I thought, “Gee, if the military can train dogs to get into noisy helicopters, it might be possible to get them into noisy M. R.I.s.”
To find out what dogs think and feel.
This means that dogs aren’t just learning from being around us that human faces are important — they are born to look at faces.
In fact, the aggregate of my research has made me realize how similar many animals are to us.
