Neuroscientist Gregory Berns at Emory University trained dogs to voluntarily enter an MRI scanner and lie very still while the caudate nucleus, a major reward center in the brain, was scanned. “Many academics rejected the idea that we could know the mind of an animal, even with modern neuroscience techniques,” writes Berns. He declined to restrain the dogs; he believed this would violate basic principles of self-determination. The dogs could leave the scanner at any time. Like people, they exhibited huge individual differences. Some were easy to train to lie still and got used to wearing
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