Food is the best way to reach someone’s heart. It’s clear that we need to eat for a biological reason, but food can evoke very deep emotions, such as childhood memories or memories of a loved one. Something similar happens with animals: food is the best way to gain their trust, and in the case of dogs, the most effective tool we have during their training.

But what if it turns out that dogs have a stronger appreciation for something we can provide than a food reward? Apparently there is, and that’s basically our praise.

Love or food? If you live with a dog or cat, you’ve probably wondered whether their affection for you has to do with your role as food provider or whether they actually have feelings for you. You may also have wondered what would happen if he had to choose between you and his food. This is a question neuroscientist Gregory S. Berns has also asked himself.

Berns has been studying dogs’ brains with MRI equipment for years and has come up with interesting results about how it works and their ability to memorize. A few years ago, she said, her dog, Newton, died and she wondered if she loved him or if the relationship was over food.

Cairo and the mission against Bin Laden. As a neuroscientist, Berns had worked with magnetic resonance systems and was well aware that it was a tool to help understand the workings of the brain; He was especially interested in the part about emotional processes. The problem was how to place a dog with extremely acute hearing into a machine that had to remain motionless and made a lot of noise.

That’s when he learned about the case of Cairo, a Belgian Malinois shepherd who participated in the mission that ended bin Laden’s life. Cairo jumped out of an American Black Hawk, and Gregory reasoned that if the dogs could be trained in such a noisy environment, they could be put into an MRI machine.

first tests. To do this, he worked with a dog mortician and built an MRI simulator in his basement so he could run tests on Callie, a terrier who became his new dog. After three months of daily practice and local volunteers, Gregory knew he could do it. He explains that they do not tranquilise the dogs and that they can do so if they move or want to leave at any time.

One of the first tests was simple training with humans and primates. The dogs were trained to put their noses into the target every time they heard a whistle. On the contrary, when the trainer raised his arms crossed, the dog knew not to go. It was a complication that they heard the whistle and the arms were still up, because that meant they couldn’t go and touch the target.

In scanner tests, Gregory observed that dogs that had more activity in the part of the prefrontal lobe that was activated during these tests performed better on the same tests.

Experiment. All of this was training for the study that had intrigued Gregory from the beginning: whether it was food or us that motivated dog love. One part of this experiment involved giving the dogs sausages, and the other part consisted of praising them. They compared their responses in the scanner by looking at the part of the brain where rewards are processed, and many subjects responded equally to praise and food. It wasn’t clear.

But they discovered something interesting: About 20% responded more strongly to praise than to food, so they concluded that most dogs love us at least as much as they love food. This is a very revealing discovery that can be observed when we train a dog and stop giving it food just to praise it, but it has never been studied in such depth before.

satisfactory result. So, the next time your dog does something good and you are not given a reward in the form of food, remember that they love your praise as much as a treat. Gregory continued to conduct these studies with dogs, and one thing he learned from other tests was that dogs are programmed from birth to process faces because there are parts of their brains that become dramatically activated when they look at us.

Additionally, he found that dogs that were perfect candidates for assistance dogs were those that had more activity in dopamine receptors in the brain and less activity in parts of the brain associated with fear and anxiety.

These are very interesting implications, and now you know that if you are one of those people who see your dog lying on the couch and relaxing calmly and say “very good” while petting him, this is just as good (or even better). You gave him a sausage.

Pictures | BBC World, Emory University

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