MUCH OF LEARNING (IN DOGS & HUMANS) IS TOP DOWN INHIBITION • Much of learning involves adjusting the connections between the prefrontal cortex and deeper brain structures that control impulses. Indeed, if you look at motor learning in humans or other mammals, you’ll notice that most of building a skill is about eliminating incorrect aspects of a movement. This is my second bulldog mutt, and as with the last one (Costello) I started the training early at 9 weeks. Strummer is doing a great job learning to suppress his impulse to move aka “sit” and to come when called, to stay calm around food and all the rest. Dogs have a tiny prefrontal cortex relative to humans but they can multipurpose it to learn lots of things and lots of different scenarios. They are oh so smart. But it is kind of fun to think about how they’re training you as well. Indeed training a bulldog breed (because they’re so stubborn) is also about training yourself in patience. Strummer is part mastiff and boxer/pit too but he’s still been giving us a run for our money on the patience side! What he doesn’t know is I’ve done this before. And it’s been pure pleasure. NOTE: I want to be thoughtful in sharing any post about a bulldog and how great they are because they have wonderful personalities, but they are not trivial to raise properly and take care of properly so if you decide to take that on understand it will take many hours per day or more to train them up and to keep them healthy. If they’re just allowed to sleep and you let them just kind of move around like sea turtles they get very unhealthy and unhappy. I suggest getting a mutt because they tend to be a little bit easier, but then they’ll also have more energy. So then you’ve got a stubborn high energy dog! But they have huge hearts, like no other breed (in my opinion). We can learn a lot from dogs. And other animals and our interactions w/them -not just observing them. Future episode with expert dog neuroscientist who also is an expert on human learning coming soon to the Huberman lab podcast. Thank you for your interest in science! @stanford @stanford.med #neuroscience #science #ciencia #neurociencia #plasticity