#Hand signals for military dogs professional

Both dogs were slowly trained to walk into an fMRI scanner and hold completely still while researchers measured their neural activity. Two dogs are involved in the first phase of the project: Callie, a two-year-old feist, or Southern squirrel-hunting dog, that Berns adopted at nine months from a shelter and McKenzie, a three-year-old border collie that already has been well-trained in agility competition by her owner, Melissa Cate.

#Hand signals for military dogs professional

Key members of the research team include Andrew Brooks, a graduate student at the Center for Neuropolicy, and Mark Spivak, a professional dog trainer and owner of Comprehensive Pet Therapy in Atlanta. We want to understand the dog-human relationship, from the dog’s perspective.” “We hope this opens up a whole new door for understanding canine cognition and inter-species communication. “It was amazing to see the first brain images of a fully awake, unrestrained dog,” says Gregory Berns, director of the Emory Center for Neuropolicy and lead researcher of the dog project. In May, the Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE) published the result of their first experiment, showing how the brains of dogs reacted to hand signals given by their owners.

The technique uses harmless functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). When your dog gazes up at you adoringly, what does it see? A best friend? A pack leader? A can opener?Dog lovers make all kinds of inferences about how their pets feel about them, but no one has captured images of actual canine thought processes-until now.Įmory researchers have developed a methodology to scan the brains of alert dogs and explore the minds of the oldest domesticated species.