How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain (7 page)

Andrew and I made special arrangements to see how Leonard and his team scanned the brains of fully awake monkeys. After registering at the security desk, we were escorted through a series of keyed doors and deposited in a changing room.

“You need to gown up,” Leonard’s assistant instructed. “From this point forward, everyone must be fully protected. This means gown, face mask, and eye shield.”

The so-called eye shields covered our faces entirely and were claustrophobic. They also had a tendency to fog up. The face masks were the surgical type. The combination of shield and mask made speech about as effective as talking into a pillow.

Our first stop was the training lab. Three oven-sized stainless steel boxes lined one wall. They resembled small refrigerators, but the hasp-type handle suggested something akin to a pottery kiln.

“These are the training boxes,” the assistant said. Opening one revealed a sterile interior with white enameled walls and a cubby for
devices allowing tubes and wires to snake out to various pieces of monitoring equipment.

On the other side of the room sat an upright tube constructed from PVC plumbing material. A foot in diameter and three feet tall, the top end was capped with clear Plexiglas. A four-inch slot was cut in the center of the cap, and a plastic shelf sat below the slot.

The assistant explained, “This is the restraint device. The monkey has a collar around its neck that fits into the slot. With its head poking through, it rests its chin on the shelf.”

Andrew pointed to a pair of hoses that were attached to the bottom of the device. “What are these for?”

“Waste drainage.”

Pushing the resulting image out of my mind, I asked, “How do you get the monkeys to go in there?”

The assistant pointed to a metal rod on the wall. “That affixes to their collar, and then we can steer them into the device from a safe distance.”

So far, none of this was looking appropriate for the Dog Project. I kept silent, though, still eager to learn anything that might be useful for us. The device kept the monkey from escaping, but it wasn’t clear what would keep its head still.

The assistant pulled a pink block of foam from a shelf.

“This is how we immobilize the head,” he explained. “First, we make a mold of the monkey’s head, which is then used to make a positive cast with plaster. From that, we use a gel-type material to make a soft cast, which fits snugly around its head. We cut holes for the eyes, nose, and mouth. This gets clamped to the restraint device.”

“And the monkeys cooperate with this?” I asked.

“They learn,” he replied. “We shape their behavior through rewards. It takes about six months to train a monkey to go into the restraint device.”

“What are the boxes for?” Andrew asked.

“Those are conditioning boxes. Once the monkeys are trained to go into the restraint device, the whole rig is placed in the box. We then train them with lights and sounds.”

“Trained for what?” I asked.

“To get addicted to drugs.”

Right. Leonard’s research group was studying the biology of drug addiction. To understand addiction, you need to look at the whole process, from the first time somebody uses a drug to the point he becomes addicted. Because it is unethical, obviously, to get people addicted to drugs, Leonard uses monkeys as a stand-in.

The assistant continued. “Once they are trained to associate cues with drugs, we take the whole rig to the MRI scanner so we can see what is going on in their brains while they are craving drugs. Are you ready to go down to the scanner?”

I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Because the MRI’s strong magnetic field affects computer equipment, the control room is partitioned from the main scanner room. When we entered, a young woman draped in a surgical gown was staring intently at a computer screen with several brain images.

She was not pleased to have visitors.

“Who are you?” she snapped at me. “Have you had a TB test?”

I honestly couldn’t remember when I had last been tested for tuberculosis. Fortunately, Andrew distracted her.

“I have!” he announced cheerfully.

Leonard’s assistant explained that we were there to observe MRI scans of monkeys. The monkeys being scanned that particular day were from a different research lab. Because they had not gone through Leonard’s behavioral training, these monkeys had received a heavy dose of sedation. One monkey, surrounded by three veterinary
technicians, was in the scanner when we entered, attached to monitors that reported vital signs like heart rate, breathing, and body temperature. Another monkey was on a cart, recovering from anesthesia. I almost walked right by it, until it started twitching with muscle spasms as the sedation wore off.

We took the opportunity to explain what we were trying to do with the Dog Project. The vet techs were not enthusiastic.

“You’re going to have to monitor them,” one said. “Vital signs and core body temperature.”

“How do you do that?” Andrew asked.

“Rectal probe.”

“Why would we do that to a dog that isn’t even sedated?” I asked.

“It’s standard operating policy to fully monitor all animals undergoing a procedure,” she replied.

“But we’re not doing a procedure,” I protested. “The dogs will be trained to go into the scanner willingly.”

She wasn’t buying it. “Who is going to be with the dogs?”

“Us, the dog trainer, and the owner.”

She shook her head. “I suppose you two are okay because you’re university employees, but no outside visitors.”

Although it was clear there was no convincing this woman, I pressed on. “Look, would you volunteer your dog to be in an experiment without being present?”

“I suppose not. Even so, you’ll have to convince the review committees.”

Andrew and I had seen enough. It surprised me that one of the nation’s premier animal research facilities wasn’t more encouraging about the Dog Project. But we were more determined than ever to find the right home for it.

When I got home that night, Callie and Lyra greeted me with unusual attention. Instead of jumping up and down as they usually did,
they sniffed my feet intently. As I walked through the house they trailed me from a respectable distance, focused on my feet.

They knew. I had tracked monkey stink home with me.

Logistical problems aside, I realized there was no way we could do the scanning at Yerkes with all those monkeys.

6

Resonant Dogs

W
HEN HELEN AND MADDY
started kindergarten, I began a tradition of visiting their classes every year to teach the kids about the brain and perhaps convey some of the excitement in figuring out how it works. The first time I did “Brain Day” at the school, the principal and I had a frank discussion of what I planned to discuss.

“Will you emphasize the importance of brain health?” she asked. “Tell the kids about wearing bike helmets and how drugs damage the brain?”

“Um, sure,” I said. “How do you feel about me bringing a brain to school?”

“You mean a plastic model?”

“No. A preserved human brain.”

“In a jar?” she asked.

“A bucket,” I explained. “We have a set of teaching brains at the university that I can check out. The kids can touch it.”

A look of fascination flashed across the principal’s face, immediately replaced with one of consternation.

“We’ll need to send home a permission slip.”

She needn’t have worried. Not a single parent objected.

The kids loved Brain Day. Even a few teachers snuck into the classroom to touch the brain. I’m not sure the students ended up remembering much of what I said that first time, but it certainly made an impression when I reached into the bucket and brought out a full-sized, dripping wet human brain. Half the class said, “Cool!” while the other half simultaneously said, “Gross!”

By the time of the Dog Project, I had done Brain Day seven years in a row. Maddy was in fifth grade, her final year in elementary school, and Helen had begun middle school. The questions the students asked always fell into a predictable pattern. The bright ones asked questions like “Where do dreams and emotions come from?” Others just wanted to jam their fingers as far into the brain as they could. The last year I did Brain Day at the elementary school, a small boy raised his hand and asked a question I had never heard before.

“Have you ever studied a dog’s brain?” he asked.

The teacher chided the boy for asking silly questions.

“As a matter of fact,” I interrupted, startled by the coincidence. “We are about to do just that.”

With Helen’s transition to middle school, there wouldn’t be an opportunity to bring the brains to her science class. Sixth-grade science was devoted to geology, meteorology, and astronomy, and biology wouldn’t return until the seventh grade.

Growing up, Kat and I had gone to public schools, and we believed strongly in public education. As is true in many cities, however, the quality of the public schools in Atlanta varies widely. The schools that Helen and Maddy attended were solid but had the difficult mission of fulfilling the needs of all the kids in a very diverse district. A large number of children couldn’t afford to buy lunch and many had special needs.

At the end of her first week of classes in middle school, Helen
brought home her science textbook, one apparently compiled by a team of bureaucrats who had overdosed on their daily Ritalin. Every page was crammed with full-color pictures guaranteed to distract even the most focused student from the text. The text itself was nothing more than a litany of facts to be memorized. Although it was the neighboring school district that had made national headlines for banning the word
evolution
from its textbooks, you could still detect a patronizing tone throughout. More than anything, it smacked of scientists-say-it-is-so (wink-wink).

Helen struggled. Although she was diligent with her homework, her test and quiz scores hovered in the mid-70s. Kat and I didn’t want to be helicopter parents, but we couldn’t let Helen flounder. It was time for a parent-teacher conference.

Helen’s science teacher was a pleasant man who bore a striking resemblance to Ed Helms. The classroom looked much like I’d expected it to: slate laboratory tables arranged in neat rows, a chemical sink with an eyewash station should any mishap occur, wall cabinets full of rock specimens, a large periodic table of the elements on the wall.

After an exchange of pleasantries, I moved on to the reason for our meeting. “We’re concerned about how Helen is doing in science.”

He pulled up a grade spreadsheet to show us.

“Helen’s a good student,” he said. “She turns in all of her homework.”

“Yes,” I said, “but she seems unclear on what material she will be expected to know.”

“The students get exposed to the material multiple times,” he explained. “They hear about it in class. They read it in the textbook. And then we review it.”

This may have been partly true, but having helped Helen with her homework and then heard what was on each test, I was skeptical. Helen was in fifth-period science, and I began to suspect that the
teacher might have been confusing what he had gone over with the classes at the beginning of the day with those at the end.

“Helen said her class is noisy and that she has a hard time hearing what you’re saying.”

“By fifth period,” he replied, “the kids have a hard time sitting still.”

Kat and I had already heard about his method of making the kids walk laps around the hallway to burn off energy. Maybe this helped some students concentrate, but it took valuable time away from Helen actually learning science.

“Can we move her to a different period?” I asked.

“We can check, but that would require changing her whole schedule.”

“Can you at least move her to the front of the class so she can hear better?”

I think he realized that this was the least painful way to get rid of us.

“Sure, I can do that.”

It was evident that he had been through this type of conference countless times before and that he had heard it all. I felt some small victory in serving notice that we cared about our daughter and that we would not sit idly while she slipped through the cracks of the public school system.

When we got home, Helen was in her room doing homework. I sat with her on her bed. Lyra jumped up to join us.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“Not so good,” I said.

A look of embarrassment flashed across Helen’s face. “What did you do?”

“We tried to get you switched to a different period, but that wasn’t going to happen. The best we could do was getting you moved closer to the front of the room.”

Helen nodded and stroked Lyra’s head. Lyra grinned in delight.

“I think he forgets to teach your period some of the material,” I explained. “You’re just going to have to make a lot of flash cards.”

Science is about questioning how the universe works and discovering new things, not memorizing a series of facts out of a textbook. Science constantly changes as we learn more about the world we live in. What could be more exciting than that? It saddened me that Helen had to learn science with all the life sucked out of it.

Helen continued to smooth out Lyra’s fur.

“Do you think Lyra knows how I feel?” she asked.

“I think she does,” I said. “But hopefully we can prove that through the Dog Project.”

Lyra provided a great deal of comfort to Helen. As the two of them cuddled together, I was struck by their perfect symbiosis. As a golden retriever, Lyra had been honed through generations of selective breeding to get along with humans, especially children. Although the Dog Project had been conceived as an effort to discover what dogs like Lyra and Callie were thinking, Helen’s reaction reminded me that the dog-human relationship is a two-way street. We couldn’t consider the dog brain without taking into account dogs’ effect on humans.

At a superficial level, you can state the obvious: humans like dogs. They provide companionship. They serve as working and utility animals. They hunt. They guard. They are soft and warm and feel good against the skin. But, as I was trying to convey to Helen, science is about asking why things are the way they are.