by Lee Charles Kelley

Created on: November 07, 2008   Last Updated: May 08, 2010

Do Dogs Learn through Making Mental Associations or Through a Simpler Process of Energy Exchange?

Let me start by saying I have no problem with the idea that certain neurons in a dog's brain are capable of forming dendritic trees with other neurons when they're activated at the same time. Hebb's Law sums it up: "Cells that fire together, wire together." This energy exchange between neurons ultimately creates an actual physical, biological pathway in the brain creating a direct connection between what might otherwise be disparate, unrelated stimuli. But it starts as an energy exchange.

I also don't have a problem with the idea that some of a dog's memories are stored in the hippocampus, one of the "memory" centers which exist in both the dog and human brain. And if the paired stimuli also create a change in the dog's underlying hedonic state at the time they're perceived or experienced, that connection is strengthened by the "pleasure and pain circuits" in the amygdalla. But one has to realize that these connections all take place in a primitive part of the brain called the basal ganglia, located near the brain stem, and are exhibited to some extent by all vertebrates, not just dogs and humans.

My point is that when some trainers say that dogs make a mental association between the word sit, the behavior itself, and the resultant reward, it all depends on what they mean by "mental association." The common implication is that there's an actual conscious thought process involvedwhich would have to take place in the frontal lobes, not just the basal gangliaand that's simply not the case; there is no "If I sit when I hear the command then I'll get a reward," construct in the dog's mind. That's a form of inductive reasoning, and according to John Staddon, the head of Duke University's behavioral science department, anytime you have an "if-then" construct you're using conceptual and symbolic thinking.

It seems clear to me that when dogs make associations between cues (commands), actions (obedience behaviors) and the resulting consequences (reinforcers) it's all happening on a totally unconscious level (perhaps entirely within the basal ganglia). And I don't know about you, but when I hear the words "mental association," it always implies that some form of conscious thinking of a higher order is taking place.

Learning in Rats, Flatworms, and Protozoans

The idea of learning to produce a specific behavior in response to a command (or "discriminate stimulus") goes back

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