Name: Do Dogs Love Us or do They Just Want Treats?
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Researchers use brain imaging to figure out whether dogs love us—or if they just want treats.

It's time to learn the truth once and for all.

Do Dogs Love Us or do They Just Want Treats?

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Researchers use brain imaging to figure out whether dogs love us—or if they just want treats.

It's time to learn the truth once and for all.

Nature

Do Dogs Love Us or do They Just Want Treats?Published: February 13, 2020Narrator: Kaylin is visiting Emory University.Kaylin's Owner: Good girl.Good morning.Gregory Berns: Hey, Kaylin, good to see you.Narrator: She’s part of a special project run by Gregory Berns.Berns: I know. Yes. Are we going to do some work today?Narrator: He’s attempting to resolve the biggest question about dogs.Berns: The party line would say that dogs, in some way, are scam artists, that, in fact, the only reason that they live with us is because we feed them and, and because we provide shelter.She is ready.So, the core of this project is the questions: Are dogs living with us because we feed them? Or are they living with us because they love us? And to me that’s all the difference in the world.Narrator: To understand just what a dog is thinking, Gregory has trained them to lie in a brain-imaging M.R.I. machine.Berns: You know, the traditional ways to understand what dogs are thinking is to look at their behavior, but the problem with that is that dogs will often do things we don’t expect. Brain imaging gets around these problems by going directly to the brain and, in essence, bypassing behavior and go directly to the organ that causes everything to happen.Narrator: The dogs in the study are trained to relate toys to different outcomes. When they see a pink car, the dogs learn to expect praise.Researcher: Good girl.Narrator: When it sees a blue knight, it learns to expect some sausage.Berns: By comparing those two conditions, the anticipation in particular to food versus human, we can go in and look at the reward system of the brain and see which one is higher, or not, or are they equal perhaps?Narrator: The level of pleasure the dog experiences is determined by the amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine the brain releases; revealed on the scan by increased blood flow to specific regions.Researcher: Good girl. Stay.Berns: So, Laurie, if you want to fade out of view and then we’ll do the toys.Narrator: Gregory has conducted this experiment on numerous dogs, and the scans are a revelation.Berns: So, these colored areas represent what dogs brains do when they’re anticipating food. It actually isn’t showing very much happening, which means that, on average, the dogs probably didn’t care as much about food as we thought.Narrator: But when expecting praise, the dopamine levels are regularly higher.Berns: Now, we actually do see quite a bit of activity. What that speaks to is the fact that praise is very interesting to the dogs.Researcher: Good job.Narrator: The brain scans show, unambiguously, that most dogs love praise just as much as food. And some dogs love praise even more.Researcher: Good girl.Berns: Who’s a good girl? You are.These results show that the social bond is as strong as the food that we’re providing to dogs and that it’s intrinsically rewarding in and of itself. And to me, that’s about as close as you can say that a dog loves you.

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Do Dogs Love Us or do They Just Want Treats?

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