我们如何改变狗的大脑

我们如何改变狗的大脑

When it comes to dogs, it's a lot like dating: People all have their types.

说到狗，这很像约会:每个人都有自己喜欢的类型。

It's not just the outside of a dog's head that looks different; the brain has a different shape, too. (Photo: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

Over the centuries, humans have bred dogs to create the looks and personalities they want. We've bred border collies for herding, bloodhounds for tracking, and golden retrievers for retrieving game — with the latter eventually evolving into the most chill family pet.

几个世纪以来，人类通过饲养狗来创造他们想要的外观和个性。我们培育了边境牧羊犬用于放牧，猎狗用于追踪，金毛寻回犬用于寻回猎物——而金毛寻回犬最终演变成了最冷的家庭宠物。

All this time we've been messing with appearance and skills, it turns out our tinkering has gone much deeper. A new study that looks at dogs' brain scans shows that humans haven't just changed the way dogs look and act; we've actually changed the shape of the canine brain.

一直以来，我们都在摆弄自己的外表和技能，事实证明，我们的修补工作已经深入得多。一项关于狗的脑部扫描的新研究表明，人类不仅改变了狗的外貌和行为方式;事实上，我们已经改变了犬类大脑的形状。

To see what impact all that breeding had on gray matter, scientists looked at MRI brain scans from 62 purebred dogs from 33 different breeds.

为了了解所有这些繁殖对灰质的影响，科学家们观察了来自33个不同品种的62只纯种狗的核磁共振脑部扫描结果。

"The first question we wanted to ask was, are the brains of different breeds of dogs different?" lead author Erin Hecht, a neuroscientist studying dog cognition at Harvard University, told The Washington Post.

“我们想问的第一个问题是，不同品种的狗的大脑是否不同?”

And that's exactly what they found. Researchers saw a wide variety in brain structure that wasn't simply related to the size of the dogs or the shapes of their heads.

这正是他们所发现的。研究人员发现，狗的大脑结构千变万化，不仅与狗的大小或头部形状有关。

Breed and brain diversity

品种和大脑多样性

Researchers identified six networks of regions in the brain that were various sizes in different dogs, and found that each of those networks was associated with at least one behavioral trait. Areas linked to sight and smell, for example, were different in dogs that were bred to be alert, such as dobermans, versus other breeds. Breeds bred for fighting had changes in the network that correlated with anxiety, stress and fear responses.

研究人员在不同的狗的大脑中发现了6个不同大小的区域网络，并发现每个网络至少与一种行为特征有关。例如，与视觉和嗅觉相关的区域，比如杜宾犬，与其他品种的狗相比，是不同的。为战斗而繁殖的品种，其神经网络的变化与焦虑、压力和恐惧反应有关。

"Brain anatomy varies across dog breeds," Hecht told Science, "and it appears that at least some of this variation is due to selective breeding for particular behaviors like hunting, herding and guarding."

赫克特在接受《科学》杂志采访时说:“不同品种的狗的大脑解剖结构各不相同，而这种差异似乎至少有一部分是由于对狩猎、放牧和守卫等特定行为的选择性繁殖造成的。”

The results were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

研究结果发表在《神经科学杂志》上。

Interestingly, these brain changes were there even though all the dogs studied were pets. They weren't professional herders or retrievers or otherwise working dogs.

有趣的是，即使所有被研究的狗都是宠物，这些大脑的变化仍然存在。他们不是专业的牧人，也不是寻回犬，或者其他工作犬。

"It's kind of amazing that we can see these differences in their brains even though they're not actively performing the behaviors," Hecht tells Science.

赫克特在接受《科学》杂志采访时表示:“令人惊讶的是，我们能看到他们大脑中的这些差异，尽管他们并没有积极地执行这些行为。”

The fact that we're changing dogs so much that it affects their brain structure is "deeply profound," Hecht says. "I think it is a call to be responsible about how we're doing that and how we’re treating the animals that we've done it to."

赫克特说，我们对狗狗的改变如此之大，以至于影响了它们的大脑结构，这一事实“意义深远”。“我认为这是一个需要对我们如何做到这一点，以及我们如何对待我们对待过的动物负责任的呼吁。”