How Dogs Love Us - by Gregory Berns (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"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