What We Can Learn By Watching Sleeping Dogs
There is an English proverb that says, "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie." It means to not bring up an old problem. Researchers in Hungary have found another reason to let dogs keep on sleeping. It seems the animals are learning while they sleep.
The scientists placed wires on the dogs' heads to measure electrical activity in the brain. The brain activity, called sleep spindles, takes place in human beings too, and has been linked with learning.
The Hungarian scientists hope to understand how the dogs' ability to learn and remember changes as they get older. The study may help researchers understand how human brains change as we age.
Ivaylo Iotchey is a neuroscience researcher. He says that this is the first time dogs’ sleep spindles have been measured, and related to the dogs learning new things. The scientists found differences between male and female dogs. Iotchey says the females appeared much better at learning new things.
But it was harder for all the older dogs to remember things, especially when several things were happening at the same time.
Dóra Szabó also studies sleep spindles. Szabo is a neuroscientist with Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She says the older dogs were easily tricked.
“If you first hide the reward into one pot, then in another and in another, they get confused after a while. So their performance is declining, and they are getting less effective in solving novel problems and shifting from one task to another."
Senior Researcher Enikő Kubinyi adds that the aging dogs suffer from the same problems as humans who are aging.
