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How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain Hardcover – October 22, 2013

by Gregory Berns (Author)

4.3 6,083 ratings

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A Wall Street Journal bestseller.

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.

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Editorial Reviews

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A Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Dog Project

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“This book’s abundant appeal and value come from following Berns through the challenges of constructing the experiment and especially of training his dog to participate. ‘Like a catcher and pitcher,’ he writes, he and his dog ‘became a team.’ The satisfaction of that relationship perhaps explains why our two species have lived together so long and happily.” —The Boston Globe

"A neuroscientist wonders what goes on in the minds of our pet dogs: Do we delude ourselves when we believe that they love us? [How Dogs Love Us is] a solid introduction to an appealing new area of research." —Kirkus

"The book is as much a scientific exploration of how the canine brain might function as it is a deeply personal story about Berns's relationship with dogs as pets and colleagues. Ultimately that connection is what makes the book compelling." —Scientific American MIND

“Thoroughly enjoyable and edifying…Five out of five stars…highly recommended.” —Your Dog

"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

“Neuroscientist Gregory Berns studies dog brains to answer that eternal question: Do our dogs really love us?” —Men’s Journal

“The journey Berns and his team embarked on, and are continuing, is as remarkable as the study’s conclusions to date. Berns proves what most pet lovers have always known. Our dogs are much like us.” —The Akron Beacon Journal

"How Dogs Love Us is a fascinating account of a scientist's tenacious pursuit of the unknown. Gregory Berns's account of his lab's Dog Project provides readers with new insights into the minds of our most loyal companions while also reminding us that scientific research should be approached with passion, love, and a bold disregard for the possibility of failure." —Dan Ariely, author of The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

"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

"With infectious passion for dogs, science, life, and love, Gregory Berns takes us on a rollicking yet scientifically serious study of the mental life of dogs-what dogs understand and how they think. Berns's tale is a dramatic but very funny look at how real, grubby science can accomplish great things. This is dognitive science at its insightful, passionate, and playful best." —Patricia Churchland, author of Touching a Nerve

"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

"Amazingly entertaining and super smart. In How Dogs Love Us, Gregory Berns gives us our first real look inside the brain of a dog, while simultaneously setting new standards in ethical science. A truly great read!" —Steven Kotler, author of A Small Furry Prayer

"Gregory Berns's book, packed with solid scientific research and warm personal stories, will set the agenda for future research on the minds and emotional lives of animals." —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals

"Fast, fun, and funny, Gregory Berns demonstrates scientifically that dogs are people, too." —Laurence Gonzales, author of Surviving Survival

"Gregory Berns's amusing story about his dogs, his daughters, and a giant magnet communicates as no other what fun science can be." —Frans de Waal, author of The Bonobo and the Atheist

"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

“Berns is an excellent writer. His explanations of the scientific thinking behind the Dog Project (as he calls his experiment) are crisp and clear and accessible to a nonscientist without being condescending…Some of the best parts of How Dogs Love Us, though, are about the questions, not the answers. In his account of the slow, meticulous, day-to-day process of creating a scientific study, Berns has produced one of the best accounts of how science is "done."” —Chicago Reader

"How Dogs Love Us makes a thought-provoking and often humorous case for something canine lovers have suspected for years: dogs are not simply 'Pavlovian learning machines' but, rather, sentient beings with a high level of empathy and an affinity for social learning. In answering his original question, he sparks many more about how we value and care for our canine companions." -Kirsten Galles, Shelf Awareness

“Berns’s book is a beautiful story about dogs, love and neurology that shows how nonhuman relationships are inspiring researches to look at animals in new ways, for their benefit and ours.” —Rebecca Skloot, New York Times Book Review

From the Author

FAQ
Why did you start the Dog Project?
Two years ago, my favorite dog - a 14 year-old pug named Newton - died. After he was gone, I wondered if he had loved me the same way I had loved him. It seemed impossible to know. I had spent the last 20 years using brain imaging to study how the human brain works, and after Newton died, I realized that we could use the same tools to understand how the canine brain works. Dogs are very special animals. They have been with humans far longer than any other creature, and yet we really don't know what they are thinking.

Where do the dogs come from?
All of the dogs are owned and trained by people in the Atlanta community. They volunteer their time to participate mostly out of a love for their dogs and a curiosity to figure out what dogs are thinking. Many of our team members have experience raising service dogs for local and national service-dog groups. Others enjoy agility competition. Several of the dogs were adopted from shelters or rescue groups. We do not use, nor do we support the use of dogs (usually beagles) that have been purposely bred for research.

How does an MRI tell you what a dog is thinking?
We use a technique called functional MRI (fMRI). When neurons are active, they require more blood and oxygen, which is picked up with fMRI. The technique has been used in humans for 20 years.

Is MRI dangerous to the dog?
MRI uses a strong magnetic field (60,000 times Earth's magnetic field). By itself, the magnetic field poses no danger to the dogs. However, the field is strong enough to pull metallic objects into the magnet, making them projectiles. Just like human patients, we take extra care to make sure there is no metal on the dog or the humans in the room. We use only nylon collars. Microchips are MR-safe. As part of the MRI process, the scanner emits radio waves to excite protons in the body (this is the 'R' in 'MRI', standing for 'resonance'). Because some dogs do not weigh very much, we take care to limit the amount of radio waves emitted. The FDA sets limits on the radio power for humans by weight, which we follow for dogs. Finally, MRIs are loud. To protect the dogs' hearing, we train them to wear ear muffs.

What have you discovered?
Dogs' brains, in many ways, look and function just like human brains. We share many of the same basic structures (called a 'homology'), including a brain region that is associated with positive emotions. We are also beginning to understand how the dog's powerful sense of smell works to identify the members of his household.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Harvest; 1st edition (October 22, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0544114515
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0544114517
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.92 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #99,699 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #282 in Dog Care
- #410 in Biology (Books)

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4.3 6,083 ratings

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Gregory Berns

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Gregory Berns, M.D., Ph.D., is the Distinguished Professor of Neuroeconomics at Emory University. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Los Angeles Times, Nature, New Scientist, Psychology Today. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, GMA, CNN, NPR, ABC, and the BBC. "How Dogs Love Us" was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller; and "What It's Like to Be a Dog" was named one of the 10 best science books of 2017 by the Smithsonian. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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PJCODMT

Great insight into how well dogs understand their special humans

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2013

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FABULOUS book. Gregory Berns got the crazy idea of training his dog to lie still in an MRI machine in the hope it would provide some insight into dogs' thinking. What he found brings scientific proof to something every dog person knows --- that dogs read us, anticipate our behavior, and act on that knowledge. Dogs, in short, have theory of mind. Berns rightly argues that this scientific evidence must change the way we think of and treat dogs.
His book is filled with fairly complex scientific concepts but it is written beautifully and clearly. It is very easy to understand and, like a good adventure novel, pulls readers along with foreshadowing and suspense. I disagree with the reviewer who said the book is written "backwards." I really wanted to know how the idea developed, how the training was done, all the background stuff in the early chapters.
I love that Berns is not an especially savvy dog person, at least at the beginning of the Dog Project, as he calls it. That makes it all the more sweet when he recognizes how hard dogs try to communicate with and understand humans. I have enormous respect for Berns and his team's commitment to ensuring that the dogs were willing, even eager, participants in every step. I especially enjoyed the long discussion of the ethical issues he faced in setting up the research and the insistence of all the human researchers that the dogs would always be free to opt out, at any time.
This book is a testament to what amazing things can be accomplished when humans acknowledge their dogs' abilities, treat them as partners (rather than as property or as slaves) and engage with them in a respectful, positive manner.
This should be required reading for ALL dog lovers. It will be required reading for all of my students at Bergin U, the only place to study the dog-human relationship at the college level.

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Elisabeth Carey

Dog research any dog lover will enjoy

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2019

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Gregory Berns loves dogs. So does the rest of his family, but he's the neuroscientist, He decided he wanted to know if his dogs really loved him, and if he could determine how and why.

This led inevitably to training the newest addition to their family of six (two adults, two daughters, two dogs) a terrier mix they named Callie, to enter an MRI, assume a scannable position, and remain motionless for long enough intervals for useful brain scans.

Just getting the necessary permissions and approvals to bring pet dogs, rather than "purpose-bred dogs," mostly beagles bred only to be lab animals, into the lab or even onto Emory University property, was a challenge. There are good reasons, for many kinds of research, for using purpose-bred animals, including dogs. It's not the best choice in every case, though, and for at least thirty years the trend has been to eliminate research animals altogether whenever there are alternatives that give good results. Real alternatives to animal haven't yet reached to point of making lab animals completely unnecessary, but the need has been dramatically reduced over the course of my working life.

And while this particular research project necessarily involved real dogs, there was no need at all for them to be purpose-bred lab animals. Pet dogs calm enough to be trained for the MRI tests were arguably a better choice, because they would have a more normal relationship with humans, and that's what "the dog project" was all about.

So Berns kept pushing, and inventing work-arounds for the demands of the research office and the legal office, and got his project approved.

Then came figuring out to train his own terrier mix, Callie, and a border collie, McKenzie, to accept the MRI, the noise of the MRI, and keeping still in the correct position for the scans. All this just to get to the proof of concept stage, proving they could do useful MRI scans on animals as different from the normal MRI subjects (humans and other primates) as dogs are.

And it's unexpectedly fun to read this section, before they ever get to the tests they want--can they tell from brain scans whether dogs actually like humans, and not just the fact that we're a reliable source of food and toys?

It's a great account, further enlivened by Callie herself, the Berns family, and the other Berns dogs, both Lyra the Golden retriever they had at the same time as Callie, and the pugs, especially Newton, who preceded them. And yet, that leads to the one part of this book that bothered me.

The other standout personality here besides Callie, is Newton. Pugs are generally happy, affectionate personalities, really great companion dogs. Except, of course, for the fact that their skulls are so short and their faces so flat that often they can't breathe properly. The snorting, the snuffling, the snoring, that many people, including Gregory Berns, think is so cute, is in fact a sign of a dog who is suffering from not breathing properly. It's not fun to breathe that badly. It's exhausting, compromises sleep, is at best uncomfortable and often painful.

This is something that can be avoided, or at least greatly minimized, by being really careful in selecting a breeder to get your dog from. But the Berns family prefers to adopt from shelters, which is good and much to be encouraged--but if you adopt pug or another brachcephalic dog from a shelter or rescue, and you have, like the Berns family, an at least upper middle class income, you should be asking your vet, first thing, whether a soft palette resection is right for your dog. If your dog is one of the dogs of this type that has significant difficulty breathing, and you have the resources, you should be talking to your vet about whether your dog can be helped. It may not be possible in every case, but when, like Gregory Berns, you know that "cute" snorting and snoring is in fact very hard on your dog, you ought to at least talk to your vet about possible help for the problem. And yet Berns, who clearly really loves his dogs, and who tells us that Newton couldn't breathe properly and it was a problem for the poor dog, never mentions talking to the vet about it.

I really do feel that even if Newton couldn't be helped, Berns could have devoted a paragraph to telling people that the snorting and snoring isn't cute, and that if they have the means they should at least talk to their vet about it. He doesn't.

And yet.

This is a really good book about research that any dog lover will love.

I should, in fairness, warn those who need to know that yes, dogs, including Newton and later Lyra, the Golden retriever, do die during the book. But these are the deaths at a reasonable age of dogs who were loved and happy members of their family. They're not awful tragedies that come out of nowhere to smack you in the face for the sake of extracting emotion from you.

And yes, you will love the research and its results.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

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how dogs love us

Reviewed in Brazil on February 16, 2022

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I loved the book. The author, albeit a scientist, is didactic in his explanations. As a dog owner and dog lover, I have always wondered what my own dogs were thinking and feeling. This book gave me a glimpse of that and has stimulated me to study more so I can better bond with my paw friends.

KLH

The best book on understanding the science of interspecies love.

Reviewed in Canada on July 25, 2019

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Berns invites us into his home, his lab & his heart. He gives scientific proof of what dog people have always known ... that we can have a special bond with our dogs if we just make the effort & take the time to understand them. The detail he describes in the process of selecting, training & scanning the dog’s brain was like a front row seat in the best university lab & lecture. He also covers the legal & administrative component of the process. Most importantly, he continually goes back to the ethics & absolute need for the dogs to have choice in whether or not they participate. This book is a “how to” manual for ethical animal research. The dogs in “The Dog Project” are lucky dogs, indeed.

Rana

Five Stars

Reviewed in India on January 13, 2017

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Halfway thru but loving it !

GKA

Hunde lieben uns

Reviewed in Germany on May 21, 2014

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Wir als Hundebesitzer wussten natürlich schon immer, dass uns unsere Hunde lieben (oder auch nicht, je nachdem). Aber jetzt wissen es auch die Wissenschaftler.
Und was für eine Leistung! Hunde, die freiwillig ewig lange ihren Kopf in einem MRI absolut stillhalten, damit man ihre Hirnaktivität kartieren kann, während sie alle möglichen interessanten Dinge schnüffeln, sehen und hören. Wenn das nicht alleine ein Liebesbeweis ist, dann weiß ich es nicht.

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Piero Tagliapietra

libro molto interessante!

Reviewed in Italy on January 28, 2014

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Consiglio questo libro ad altri biologi, etologi, veterinari e tutti gli appassionati Dell,argomento.
Mi ė piaciuto lo stile:semplice nonostante tratti una materia complessa

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