January 27, 2014
I just watched a video about a new study at Emory University
where they are trying to understand canine cognition. They’ve trained a dog to
be still in an MRI machine and they watch the brain while they give commands
that sometimes involve food treats and at other times don’t.
With MRI, the team can visualize how specific parts of a
dog’s brain respond to stimuli like food and social rewards. By evaluating
brain activity, they can infer how much of a dog’s motivation is about food
rewards and how much is the result of social interaction with a human. They
say, “We’re finding strong evidence that it is not just about food.”
Duh! It’s hard for me to not be a little irreverent when I
read this stuff. Have they ever spent any time with a dog? Maybe it’s these kinds of studies that
will finally ‘prove’ that animals are feeling, thinking, emotional beings, and
should be treated as such.
It is very difficult for me to see that science still hasn’t
yet embraced the field of telepathy. The quantum physicists are on board, but
when will the behaviorial sciences and biologists catch up?
I had wanted to do animal research when I was young – sit in
the jungle with Jane Goodall and study chimps. Then I wanted to do cetacean
research to understand whales and dolphins. When I discovered telepathy I
realized that this would answer so many scientific questions. What could be
easier than asking the animal directly the What, Why, Where and Who of their
lives?
While it seems we are still in the infancy of accepting telepathy and animal communication, I am seeing slow progress. When I took my
first class in 1988, now 26 years ago, people thought I was nuts. I couldn’t
mention it to everyday people without them backing quickly away. That is not
the case now. Almost everyone has at least heard about animal communication or
know someone who has used a communicator or they have seen something on TV.
A former student of mine has been working for the past two
years on her PhD project in animal communication. She has been talking to
people’s pets and recording the accuracy of their interviews and her results
are quite impressive. She’s blazing a trail to legitimize this field through
the scientific method.
A few months ago, I was delighted to have a student in an
animal communication workshop that is a professor at a Canadian university. She
teaches a class in “multiple ways of knowing” and wants to bring telepathy and animal and nature
communication into the curriculum.
So I guess that things really are changing. It’s just taking
longer than I would like.
