Fascinating Book: What It's Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience

 Every now and then I read straight science books (well, I am a meteorologist) and I was inspired to read the latest book by Dr. Gregory Berns. He's the neuroscientist at Emery University that used MRIs on live dogs and proved they have the exact same emotions (love being the best) as people. So, I just enjoyed his new book that furthers his studies with dogs and includes Sea Lions, and even the extinct thylacine (a Tasmanian dog-like animal that became extinct in the 1930s). I learned a lot about brain functions, how the brain stem controls whether or not people go into comas, and so much more. It's a fascinating book, where Dr. Berns and his colleagues even do memory tests and try training dogs, seals, Sea lions and other mammals.  As expected with a science book, it gets a bit deep in the weeds, but still, fascinating!

What It's Like to Be a Dog: And Other Adventures in Animal Neuroscience  by Dr. Gregory Berns

ABOUT THE BOOK: What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist and bestselling author Gregory Berns and his team did something nobody had ever attempted: they trained dogs to go into an MRI scanner -- completely awake -- so they could figure out what they think and feel. And dogs were just the beginning. In What It's Like to Be a Dog, Berns takes us into the minds of wild animals: sea lions who can learn to dance, dolphins who can see with sound, and even the now extinct Tasmanian tiger. Berns's latest scientific breakthroughs prove definitively that animals have feelings very much like we do -- a revelation that forces us to reconsider how we think about and treat animals. Written with insight, empathy, and humor, What It's Like to Be a Dog is the new manifesto for animal liberation of the twenty-first century.