What Does Your Dog Actually Feel When You Leave?

You pick up your keys, and your dog already knows. We tend to assume the bond is simple conditioning: you are the source of food, walks, and the door opening again. A warm, furry machine. In the last fifteen years, neuroscientists have shown that is wrong. Gregory Berns at Emory University trained dogs to lie awake and unrestrained inside an MRI scanner, so we could finally watch the reward center of a conscious dog. What it lights up for is not what you would expect. The scent of you outranks every other smell. Praise beats food in most dogs. Your dog tracks not just your words but whether you mean them. And meeting your eyes runs the same oxytocin loop once seen only between a mother and her infant. We cannot scan for the feeling of love. But we can show the bond is built into the brain and body, not bought with treats. Featured research: • Gregory Berns et al., PLOS ONE (2012) — first awake, unrestrained dog fMRI (Emory) • Berns et al., Behavioural Processes (2015) — caudate response to a familiar human's scent • Cook, Prichard, Spivak & Berns, SCAN (2016) — praise vs food in the reward center • Attila Andics et al., Science (2016) — dogs process word meaning and tone separately (Eötvös Loránd) • Nagasawa / Kikusui et al., Science (2015) — the oxytocin gaze loop • Topál et al., J. Comparative Psychology (1998) — secure-base attachment in dogs #dogs #neuroscience #animalcognition #dogbrain #oxytocin