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HOW DOGS LOVE US: A NEUROSCIENTIST AND HIS ADOPTED DOG DECODE THE CANINE BRAIN (PAPERBACK)
by Gregory Berns (See other books by author)
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Publisher: Little a
Edition: 2022 Paperback, 270 pages
ISBN: 9781477800874
Item: DEG1088PBK
Ships the next business day.
Summary: Gregory Berns' How Dogs Love Us answers the age-old question of dog lovers everywhere and offers new evidence, based on looking into the inner workings of the canine brain, that dogs should be treated like our best human friends: with love, respect, and appreciation for their social and emotional intelligence.
| Price: $15.95 |
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Expanded Description:
The powerful bond between humans and dogs is one that’s uniquely cherished. Loyal, obedient, and affectionate, they are truly “man’s best friend.” But do dogs love us the way we love them? Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns had spent decades using MRI imaging technology to study how the human brain works, but a different question still nagged at him: What is my dog thinking?
After his family adopted Callie, a shy, skinny terrier mix, Berns decided that there was only one way to answer that question—use an MRI machine to scan the dog’s brain. His colleagues dismissed the idea. Everyone knew that dogs needed to be restrained or sedated for MRI scans. But if the military could train dogs to operate calmly in some of the most challenging environments, surely there must be a way to train dogs to sit in an MRI scanner.
With this radical conviction, Berns and his dog would embark on a remarkable journey and be the first to glimpse the inner workings of the canine brain. Painstakingly, the two worked together to overcome the many technical, legal, and behavioral hurdles. Berns’s research offers surprising results on how dogs empathize with human emotions, how they love us, and why dogs and humans share one of the most remarkable friendships in the animal kingdom.
How Dogs Love Us answers the age-old question of dog lovers everywhere and offers profound new evidence that dogs should be treated as we would treat our best human friends: with love, respect, and appreciation for their social and emotional intelligence.
What experts are saying about How Dogs Love Us:
An exciting journey to the center of a dog's emotional mind. Berns offers hilarious descriptions of training his dog to lie still while being fed hot dogs in the MRI brain-scan machine. Temple Grandin, author of Animals Make Us Human
This book lets you see inside the mind of a dog as never before. How Dogs Love Us will revolutionize how we understand animals—especially our dogs. This is a must-read for animal lovers and neuroscientists alike. Brian Hare, author of The Genius of Dogs
How Dogs Love Us is the beautifully written story of an iconoclastic neuroscientist challenging the status quo and seeking to truly understand the dogs with whom we share our lives. Jennifer Arnold, author of Through a Dog's Eyes
What reviewers are saying...
In the fascinating book How Dogs Love Us, [Berns] recounts the methods his team employed, and how their pet dogs made these groundbreaking studies possible. There’s much to learn in this engrossing read. Bark Magazine
Gregory Berns, M.D., Ph.D., is the Distinguished Professor of Neuroeconomics at Emory University. Dr. Berns’s research is frequently the subject of popular media coverage, including articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
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| More than just 'Worthwhile', January 29, 2015 |
| Reviewer: KoiKeeper |
If you are a dog lover, or are in love with a dog lover, you will like Gregory Berns, his family, and his staff; as drawn by the pictures and words of this book.
'How Dogs Love Us' is an autobiographical recounting of a Doctor's family 'growing up' in Atlanta. It also shows most clearly how behaviorists have failed to present themselves coherently to most college students, including ones smart enough to end up doing original medical research that impacts all of us dog people.
And it shows how a devoted dog lover can train a smart dog to do very trying tasks despite the educational failing of Psych 101 & 102
I intended to give this book a four star, not five, rating but when I saw the other reviewer only gave it a three, I was moved to up my rating to balance out Dogwoman's grade.
Berns is clearly a better-read doctor than most MD's; but he is not a writer by profession. And yes, he could have improved the book by hiring an editor or ghost writer. Berns is often hard to follow and he does tend to meander between hard science and folksy anecdotal pop science with a good dose of speculation and personal opinionating thrown in. Dr. Berns is often very moving, often entertaining and often circuitous. But he does eventually get to the bottom line, which is (if I may paraphrase him)
'Dogs really are Mans best friend, and my research proves some of the Why That Is So!'
I have two bones to pick with the 3 Star review:
1 _Dogwoman missed the page where Berns described Callie as a Feist, and he described Feist as an old American dog type, later he threw in some descriptions tat would confuse anyone who missed the Feist expanation (poor editing).
2_ Hot dog scent and owner scent were not confused in the fMRI experiments. |
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| How Dogs Love Us, November 27, 2013 |
| Reviewer: dogwoman |
When you pick up this book, you might think you will find out how dogs love us, as in the title. But you won’t. And based on the extraordinary photo of a Golden Retriever on the cover, you might expect the book is about a Golden Retriever. But it isn’t. The subtitle says that Dr. Berns and his team “decode the canine brain.” No, they don’t. Although I felt a bit misled by all of this, I did find, however, some things of interest in this book.
Until Dr. Berns, no one had performed an MRI on a living dog’s brain. Dead dogs, yes. Living people, yes. Consider the logistics: you can tell a person to hold still for an MRI, but how do you keep a living dog still for an extended period of time? Sedation would compromise the results. Dr. Berns’ description of the technical aspects of taking MRIs is a bit daunting, but the recounting of the dog training for the procedure is quite understandable, although the method is not terribly original. Alas, he juxtaposes science and “stories,” such as when one of the dogs almost drowned in a river, and it can be a bit disorienting to the reader. I think some of the anecdotes were for entertainment and to make the book seem less dry, but I would have preferred either all science or all stories, rather than the combination.
One of the experiments they tried after getting a baseline brain MRI involved discrimination of various human scents while in the MRI machine to see what areas of the brain were activated. But they rewarded the dogs with pieces of hot dogs for staying still. Could the scent of the hot dogs have compromised the results? I was also surprised when Dr. Berns described his dog, Callie, as a “village dog” in the prologue, but did not get around to defining what a village dog was until page 207. And, by this definition, Callie is not a village dog! She is a dog from a shelter. Berns also says that mongrels always have tails that arch over their backs, which is simply not true.
My impression is that this book was put together hastily. It needed editing and better decisions about what to include, as well as more graceful segues. The author’s passion for science and love for dogs is unquestionable, but the meanderings and errors dilute the message. I really do look forward to hearing more about this kind of research. |
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Sydney lives in Carrollton TX and is a Australian Shepherd.
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