{"id":285189,"date":"2019-09-03T17:08:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T21:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=285189"},"modified":"2023-11-08T20:31:18","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T01:31:18","slug":"harvard-researcher-finds-canine-brains-vary-based-on-breed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2019\/09\/harvard-researcher-finds-canine-brains-vary-based-on-breed\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunters, herders, companions: Breeding dogs has reordered their brains"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"Researcher

Harvard researcher Erin Hecht published a paper which found that canine brains vary based on breed.<\/p>

Photos by Jon Chase\/Harvard Staff Photographer<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

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\n\t\tHunters, herders, companions: Breeding dogs has reordered their brains\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tJill Radsken\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tCanine research lends insights into understanding the evolution of the human mind\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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Erin Hecht, speaking as both scientist and dog lover, explained how her interests came together:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey beg to be analyzed,\u201d said the assistant professor of neuroscience in the department of Human Evolutionary Biology. \u201cYou find yourself constantly thinking about what goes on in their heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecht<\/a>, who joined the faculty in January, has published her first paper on our canine comrades in the Journal of Neuroscience<\/a>, finding that different breeds have different brain organizations owing to human cultivation of specific traits. Using MRI scans from 63 dogs of 33 breeds, Hecht found neuroanatomical features correlating to different behaviors such as hunting, guarding, herding, and companionship. Sight hunting and retrieving, for example, were both tied to a network that included regions involved in vision, eye movement, and spatial navigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my career so far, there have been a couple times when you look at the raw images and know there is something there even before you do statistics. This was one of these times,\u201d she said. \u201cI was like \u2018Holy cow! How come no one else has done this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecht isn\u2019t entirely sure why dogs have not been long considered proper study subjects, but she theorizes that it\u2019s easy to dismiss what lies at your feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was weird to be doing this back in 2012. When I told people, some would say, \u2018Oh that\u2019s cute,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt took a long time to convince other scientists and funding agencies that dogs could really tell us something about brain evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\t\n\n\t

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Source: \u201cSignificant neuroanatomical variation among domestic dog breeds,\u201d Erin E. Hecht, Jeroen B. Smaers, William J. Dunn, Marc Kent, Todd M. Preuss and David A. Gutman<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\n\t\r\n\n

Hecht came to researching dogs by way of a side project while in graduate school at Emory University studying human brain evolution. Seven years ago, she found herself watching a nature show about domestic dogs and selectively bred Russian foxes. The scientist studying the dogs and foxes discussed genetics and evolution, but there was no mention of neuroscience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018How is this possible? No one\u2019s thought about looking at their brains,\u2019\u201d Hecht recalled.<\/p>\n

She reached out to Lyudmila Trut at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics<\/a> (part of the Russian Academy of Sciences) in Siberia. Trut connected her with researchers working on domesticated foxes, who gave her a half dozen brains for a pilot study. Around the same time, Hecht found Marc Kent<\/a>, a veterinary neurologist at University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine<\/a>, who shared dozens of MRI scans of his four-legged patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had this data set and felt lucky I had access to it,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter a couple of years, the [National Science Foundation] funded the study to continue studying dogs and these foxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in her office above the Museum of Comparative Zoology<\/a>, flanked by her own Australian shepherds, Lefty and Izzy, Hecht said she and her collaborators were able see that the breed differences weren\u2019t randomly distributed, but were, in fact, focused in certain parts of the brain. They examined variability, pinpointing six networks of the brain where anatomy correlated with types of processing important for different breeds: reward, olfaction, eye movement, social action and higher cognition, fear and anxiety, and scent processing and vision.<\/p>\n

There were some surprises. For example, skill in hunting by scent was not associated with the anatomy of the olfactory bulb. \u201cRather, this skill was linked to higher-order regions that are involved in more complex aspects of scent processing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not about having a brain that can detect if the scent is there. It\u2019s about having the neural machinery to decide what to do with that information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hecht\u2019s lab also studies brain evolution in humans, but she said continuing the dog research provides a window into understanding the human mind.<\/p>\n\r\n

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Miniature Australian Shepherd Lefty checks out a brain model.<\/p><\/figcaption>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\u201cBorder collies are amazing at herding, but they aren\u2019t born knowing how to herd. They have to be exposed to sheep; there is some training involved. Learning plays a crucial role, but there\u2019s clearly something about herding that\u2019s already in their brains when they are born. It\u2019s not innate behavior, it\u2019s a predisposition to learn that behavior. That\u2019s analogous to what goes on with humans with language. They don\u2019t pop out of the womb being able to speak, but clearly all humans are predisposed in a very significant way to learn language. If we can figure out how evolution got those skills into dog brains, it might help us understand how humans evolved the skills that separate us from other animals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

To that end, Hecht is now studying dogs specifically bred for performance. With the help of Sophie Barton<\/a>, a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the lab is currently recruiting a number of working dog breeds, including highly skilled German shepherds engaged in schutzhund\u00a0<\/em>(military obedience) training, border collies who compete in herding competitions, retrievers who excel at field trials, and more. They are studying both champion dogs and their low-skill littermates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for animals raised in the same environment where, for whatever reason, one has excelled and one dropped out,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That will give researchers a better sense of how recent evolution of dog brains shaped the anatomy inherited from their ancestors, even if it\u2019s \u201can evolutionary eyeblink.\u201d And, as for the question she gets asked most \u2014 \u201cWhat\u2019s the smartest dog?\u201d \u2014 Hecht has the science to back up her diplomatic answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis research suggests there\u2019s not one type of canine intelligence,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are multiple types.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n

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