Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"Dog lovers and neuroscientists should both read this important book." -- Dr. Temple Grandin
What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist and bestselling author Gregory Berns and his team did something nobody had ever attempted: they trained dogs to go into an MRI scanner -- completely awake -- so they could figure out what they think and feel. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog , Berns takes us into the minds of wild animals: sea lions who can learn to dance, dolphins who can see with sound, and even the now extinct Tasmanian tiger. Berns's latest scientific breakthroughs prove definitively that animals have feelings very much like we do -- a revelation that forces us to reconsider how we think about and treat animals. Written with insight, empathy, and humor, What It's Like to Be a Dog is the new manifesto for animal liberation of the twenty-first century.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team began with a radical step: they taught dogs to go into an MRI scanner-completely awake. They discovered what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems, and a complex understanding of human speech. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns explores the fascinating inner lives of wild animals from dolphins and sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger. Much as Silent Spring transformed how we thought about the environment, so What It's Like to Be a Dog will fundamentally reshape how we think about-and treat-animals. Groundbreaking and deeply humane, it is essential reading for animal lovers of all stripes"--
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- Introduction (p. 1)
- 1 What It's Like to Be a Dog (p. 9)
- 2 The Marsh ma I low Test (p. 27)
- 3 Why a Brain? (p. 49)
- 4 Seizing Sea Lions (p. 75)
- 5 Rudiments (p. 101)
- 6 Painting with Sound (p. 117)
- 7 Buridan's Ass (p. 137)
- 8 Talk to the Animals (p. 159)
- 9 A Death in Tasmania (p. 183)
- 10 Lonesome Tiger (p. 211)
- 11 Dog Lab (p. 235)
- Epilogue: The Brain Ark (p. 257)
- Acknowledgments (p. 261)
- Notes (p. 265)
- Index (p. 283)
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Booklist Review
For How Dogs Love Us (2013), Emory University professor Berns drew on extensive studies in which the canine brain was examined with MRI technology to pinpoint the neurological foundation of dogs' attachment to humans. In this sequel of sorts, Berns mines the same rich vein of MRI-based data to explore the seemingly unanswerable puzzle of what it actually feels like to be an animal, with dogs as his first furry subjects. Defying a long-standing philosophical belief that one can't possibly fathom the internal experiences of nonhuman creatures without somehow stepping inside their minds, Berns used the latest functional MRI equipment, which takes moving pictures of brainwave activity in the presence of smells or commands, to map the similarities between human and animal cognition. Berns also peeks into the gray matter of dolphins, sea lions, and Tasmanian devils, bolstering his contention that both four-footed and sea-dwelling mammals think and feel much as we do, a sentiment animal lovers and fans of books by Jane Goodall, E. O. Wilson, and Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason will heartily embrace.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2017 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
Berns (Neuroeconomics/Emory Univ.; How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, 2013, etc.) reveals how his training to be a doctor shaped his life in unexpected ways.The author was using MRI to study the processes involved in decision-making when the death of a beloved dog led him to ponder the human-dog relationship. After viewing photographs of the capture of Osama bin Laden in which dogs were jumping from helicopters under chaotic conditions, the author believed if he could train a dog to enter an MRI machine voluntarily, he could compare the functioning of human and dog brains. One of his motives was to refute the rationale that dogs are unaware of their own suffering, a view that was used to justify the medical school practice of dissecting them without anesthesia while still alive. Dogs (and other animals) can be conditioned to respond to hand signals or spoken words, but Berns asks, to what extent do they understand that these signals are intended to convey a meaningful message? A first step in the investigation involved figuring out if dogs share "the same basic structures for emotion" as humans. "Animals can represent and communicate knowledge in nonverbal ways," but more is involved than just the structures. The connectivity between regions of the brain is also a determining factor in the level of consciousness and self-awareness of animals. By providing the "roadmap for the level of consciousness that is possible," animals as diverse as dogs, apes, and whales can understand spoken commands and hand signals. As pet lovers already know, such experiments confirm that dogs also recognize and respond to body language that indicates the emotional states of other dogs and humans. The author explains that his purpose in writing this book is "to raise awareness of the mental lives of the animals with whom we share the planet." In that, he succeeds. An impressive overview of modern neurology and the still-unanswered issues raised by our treatment of our fellow living creatures. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Gregory Berns, M.D., Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at Emory University, where he directs the Center for Neuropolicy and Facility for Education and Research in Neuroscience. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller, How Dogs Love Us . He lives in Atlanta with his wife and too many dogs.
Patron comment on
Not for general reader ...This book (263 pages) has about, about pages 23 devoted to insights into what, just maybe, a dog could be thinking. The other 240 pages deal with how to get a dog (or other animals) into a MRI machine whereby the good doctor can project what an animal is thinking. I found Berns writing style to be erudite (Gregory Berns is a professor of psychology at Emory) and laborious to read as a general reader. This text is best for those who are in the field of animal husbandry and like reading about experiments and scientific processes.