Tag: science

Mindfulness meditation can change your brain in just 40 days!

Skynetlikesponies

Mindfulness is the ability we all have to be fully present in the moment and aware of out surroundings. Mindfulness means having a constant awareness of the present, whilst non-judgementally experiencing our thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, and surroundings. Mindfulness is essential for effective animal training as it not only ensures that we are aware of the subtleties of the animal’s behaviour so that our training is accurate, but also keep us safe through an increased awareness of our surrounding and the animals reaction to it.

When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts focus on what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than revisiting the past or imagining the future. There are three core elements are important for mindfulness to be successful: intention, attention, and attitude (Shapiro & Carlson, 2009; 2014). Intention is informed by what is our aim, vision or aspiration is for this time; it is what you hope to get from practising mindfulness. Attention requires us to be fully aware and tuned into the present moment, rather than being preoccupied with the past or future. Finally, how we attend to the present, our attitude, should be open, kind, and curious. Each element supports the others.

Meditation aims to train awareness, focus and perspective through mental exercises. Mindful mediation is the practice of being aware of the unconditional truth of the present without judgement. Most mindful meditation techniques focus on aspects of body, breath and thought awareness during a period of quiet sitting.

A recent study has found that just 40 days of mindfulness meditation training can change the structure of your brain and improve your quality of life. The results centred on the parietal cortex with a relative increase in cortical thickness in the left precuneus. Furthermore, in the upper left parietal cortex and bilateral inferior parietal lobe, cortical thickness increased in the left inferior temporal gyrus after 40 days. Participants also report decreases symptoms of depression and trait anxiety after the mindfulness training.

See the study at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47470-4

TL:DR Mindfulness can make you a great animal trainer and rewire your brain improving your quality of life!

 

 

Rats give more food to others when they smell hungry

Skynetlikesponies

This article is super interesting for two reasons. One, the complexity of olfactory social cues in many animals is fascinating and seems to create a world of sentience and awareness that we have very little access to. Two, it shows (once again) that rats, an unfairly maligned creature, are capable of great care for others, as are many other social species.

“How do animals that help their brethren manage to prioritize those most in need? A new study shows that rats can use odor cues alone to determine how urgently to provide food assistance to other rats in need.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200324202031.htm

Separation Anxiety in Dogs: The Underlying Causes

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A new study into separation anxiety in dogs has found several root causes of the disorder, including: “exit frustration,” “redirected reactive,” “reactive inhibited” and “boredom”.

Abstract -“Diagnoses are widely used in both human and veterinary medicine to describe the nature of a condition; by contrast, syndromes are collections of signs that consistently occur together to form a characteristic presentation. Treatment of syndromes, due to either their lack of a clear biological cause or multiple causes, necessarily remains non-specific. However, the discovery of interventions may help refine the definition of a syndrome into a diagnosis. Within the field of veterinary behavioral medicine, separation related problems (SRPs) provide a good example of a syndrome. We describe here a comprehensive process to develop a diagnostic framework (including quality control assessments), for disambiguating the signs of SRPs as an example of a heterogeneous behavioral syndrome in non-human animals requiring greater diagnostic and treatment precision. To do this we developed an online questionnaire (243 items) that covered the full spectrum of theoretical bases to the syndrome and undertook a large-scale survey of the presenting signs of dogs with one or more of the signs of SRPs (n = 2,757). Principal components analysis (n1 = 345), replicated in a second sample (n2 = 417; total n = 762), was used to define the structure of variation in behavioral presentation, while hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis cross checked with the partitioned around medoids method was used to determine sub-populations. A total of 54 signs were of value in defining a latent structure consisting of seven principal components (termed “exit frustration,” “social panic,” “elimination,” “redirected frustration,” “reactive communication,” “immediate frustration,” “noise sensitivity”), which divided the population in four clusters (termed “exit frustration,” “redirected reactive,” “reactive inhibited” and “boredom” related SRPs) with 11 sub-clusters (3, 3, 3, and 2, respectively). We used a bottom-up data-driven approach with numerous quality checks for the definition of robust clusters to provide a robust methodology for nosological studies in veterinary behavioral medicine, that can extend our understanding of the nature of problems beyond SRPs. This provides a solid foundation for future work examining aetiological, and differential treatment outcomes, that will allow both more effective treatment and prevention programmes, based on a fully appreciation of the nature of the problem of concern.”

The original paper

Associative Fear Learning in the Brain

Skynetlikesponies

An interesting article came out in Nature (abstract and link below) providing more evidence that neural links between the hippocampus and amygdala are necessary for associative fear learning. This evidence reinforces the idea that to reduce / undo fear association learning, we need to focus on amygdala activity reducing training techniques and environmental constructs, such as:

  • Training using positive reinforcement and pleasant stimuli, rather than aversives that may further activate the amygdala-hippocampus network.
  • Deconditioning fear through methods less likely to trigger fear/panic: such as systematic desensitisation, cognitive activation and counter conditioning.
  • Watching the animals body language to make sure you are not near the fear/panic threshold for the fear triggering stimuli while training so that the amgdala -hippocampal pathways are not activated and the associative memory strengthened.
  • Increase oxytocin through stable, social interactions allowing supportive attachments to form
  • Reduce overall environmental stress

“Abstract

In contextual fear conditioning, experimental subjects learn to associate a neutral context with an aversive stimulus and display fear responses to a context that predicts danger. Although the hippocampal–amygdala pathway has been implicated in the retrieval of contextual fear memory, the mechanism by which fear memory is encoded in this circuit has not been investigated. Here, we show that activity in the ventral CA1 (vCA1) hippocampal projections to the basal amygdala (BA), paired with aversive stimuli, contributes to encoding conditioned fear memory. Contextual fear conditioning induced selective strengthening of a subset of vCA1–BA synapses, which was prevented under anisomycin-induced retrograde amnesia. Moreover, a subpopulation of BA neurons receives stronger monosynaptic inputs from context-responding vCA1 neurons, whose activity was required for contextual fear learning and synaptic potentiation in the vCA1–BA pathway. Our study suggests that synaptic strengthening of vCA1 inputs conveying contextual information to a subset of BA neurons contributes to encoding adaptive fear memory for the threat-predictive context.”

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15121-2

Pain Diagnosis in the None Verbal Animal (Horse)

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The other day, I came acrountitledss the below paper which is a very good summary of what we know about back pain in horses and the potential causes and symptoms (physical, emotional and behavioural). All too often behaviours which could be (or are) caused by pain are punished with very little thought given to potential physical causes and investigation. Even worse without the potential consideration of role of pain in behaviour, the horse doesn’t receive treatment and so continues to suffer. Ideally, as horse owners we should be educated in the basics of what to look out for and all back investigation  and treatment would be done in collaboration with veterinary professionals. This is definitely a paper to read, may be on a raining evening over a cup of hot cocoa as it is a reasonable length. It is always good to remind ourselves of best practice around welfare!

Link to the full paper below the abstract

Detecting and Measuring Back Disorders in Nonverbal Individuals: The Example of Domestic Horses

Clémence Lesimple 1, 2,*, Carole Fureix 1 , Lydiane Aubé 1 , & Martine Hausberger 2 1Ethologie Animale et Humaine, Université de Rennes 2CNRS, Ethologie Animale et Humaine UMR Université de Rennes *Corresponding author

(Email: lesimple.c@gmail.com) Citation – Lesimple, C., Fureix, C., Aubé, L., & Hausberger, M. (2016). Detecting and measuring back disorders in nonverbal individuals: The example of domestic horses. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 3(3), 159–179. doi: 10.12966/abc.05.08.2016

Abstract – Back disorders are amongst the major health-related disorders associated to working conditions in our society. Horses share with humans the exposure to potential physically harmful working conditions leading to back disorders. However, despite their high prevalence, these problems are often unacknowledged in the horse industry, mostly because their diagnosis remains difficult, particularly in field conditions. In the present review, we review the current scientific knowledge on back vertebral, muscular and musculoskeletal disorders. We will first present the existing knowledge about their prevalence and the tools available for diagnosis. Then, the different potential sources of back pain, including anatomical implications, the effect of emotionality and working conditions will be discussed. We finally present the existing behavioral, postural and physiological indicators of back pain that could help an early detection of back disorders.

Keywords – Horse, Equine, Work, Illness, Back disorder assessment, Indicators

Click to access 57d42cdd08ae601b39a8a5c9.pdf

Dogs Confirmed to be able to Recognise Emotional Expressions

Skynetlikesponies

Science has confirmed that dogs can recognise facial expressions of emotion in situations devoid of other social cues to human emotion (e.g. body language and voice).

 

See article below for detail.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150212131647.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28Latest+Science+News+–+ScienceDaily%29

A Thank You to Book Reviewers

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bookI just found two really great reviews of my book on the American Amazon. They are quite old but I had somehow never seen them. A belated thank you to both reviewers, your comments are appreciated.
“5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read For Every Horseman, Great Value, December 28, 2011
By
Bill Baehr “whipperin1” (Partsunknown, Wyoming, USA)
 Knowing Your Horse: A Guide to Equine Learning, Training and Behaviour (Paperback)
My second favorite horsemanship book of all time. I’ve read many horsemanship books and this one beats all the others except for “Equitation Science” which I consider to be the very best. This book contains more important training knowledge than reading all of the books, watching all the dvds and attending all the clinics by Parelli, Clinton Anderson, Buck Brannaman, Gordon Wright, George Morris, Denny Emerson, John Lyons, Stacy Westfall, Cherry Hill and all the rest of that ilk. No ego tripping, bragging or marketing of “horse whispering” products either, just practical horsemanship solidly based upon the science of learning. Do yourself and especially your horses a big favor and study this book.”
“5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Equitation Science, August 7, 2012

By
This review is from: Knowing Your Horse: A Guide to Equine Learning, Training and Behaviour (Paperback)
Knowing your horse outlines the fundamentals of learning theory as applied to horse training. This book provides correct definitions of learning theory and examples to help the reader grasp the concepts. There are training plans included to help people apply learning theory, as well as case studies and research reviews. Whilst I am also a huge fan of Equitation Science, Knowing Your Horse is much clearer and easier to read.”
http://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Your-Horse-Learning-Behaviour/dp/1405191643

Paul McGreevy on the use of the Whip in Horse Racing

Skynetlikesponies

download (1)This is a video everyone should watch. The still well established use of whips in racing and all horse sports, as well as our equestrian leisure activities, is a damning indictment of our consideration of the horse’s welfare in our entertainment by them and relationship with them. If you can’t train a horse without striking it with a whip, then you can’t train a horse at all, only bully one. Violence is not necessary for performance and is detrimental to learning and cognition (google.co.uk/scholar can provide you which much scientific evidence should you wish to find it).

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2012/05/21/3507350.htm