CAREER: Integrating brain-behavior evolution with real-world science impacts through neuroscience of working dogs

职业：通过工作犬的神经科学将大脑行为进化与现实世界的科学影响相结合

• 批准号: 2238071
• 负责人: Erin Hecht
• 金额: $ 136.1万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-03-01 至 2028-02-29
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2238071&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Integrating; brain; behavior; evolution

Some species of animals have innate predispositions to acquire particular collections of learned skills. This is particularly apparent in working dog breeds, which provides the opportunity to understand this general phenomenon in detail. For example, border collies have an innate interest in sheep and can easily be trained to herd livestock, but this is not the case for pointers, retrievers, and sled dogs, who instead each have their own, different behavioral predispositions. How does this occur? The proposed research explores this question using noninvasive neuroimaging in 220 dogs of 4 breeds, including groups of nonworking companion dogs and working dogs in the real world. The research will examine dogs practicing historical working skills like herding and hunting, as well as more modern skills that directly impact human society, including guide dogs, service dogs, and scent detection dogs. Rigorous analyses of these brain images will identify changes related to innate skill predispositions as well as brain plasticity resulting from learning. Integrated with this research, the project will support coordinated education and research experiences for students at Harvard and elsewhere. In a unique new undergraduate course, students will design and carry out their own dog behavior experiments. Course materials and video data will be made publicly available to extend educational and student research impact beyond the host institution. Additionally, data from the research project will support a variety of independent student projects. Open-access datasets and data analytic tools from the project will support further research at other institutions. Outreach activities will leverage dogs as public-interest “ambassadors for science,” including knowledge exchange with canine professional sectors.Feedback loops between behavior and evolution have been posited since the time of Darwin, but surprisingly little behavioral neuroscience research has probed this topic. This proposal addresses the critical central question, “What is the interplay between plasticity and adaptation in brain evolution?” It explores three distinct hypotheses about how such change could occur in the brain. Working dogs offer a uniquely well-controlled “natural experiment” on this question, because strong and rapid artificial selection by humans has created different breeds with different early-emerging predispositions for learned behaviors. The project’s aims will identify neural correlates of innate predispositions for particular categories of learned skills accrued across generations of evolved change, brain plasticity resulting from learning these skills within a lifetime, and differences between neural correlates of selection for historical and more recent skills. Additionally, the performance ratings of working dog organizations will be used to identify markers of individual variation in real-world working skills, which may have direct applied impacts for breeding and training efforts. These goals will be accomplished using canine-optimized neuroimaging sequences from the Human Connectome Project, including T1- and T2-weighted MRI, diffusion-weighted imaging, and resting state functional connectivity. Comprehensive, whole-brain analyses will examine gray matter morphometry using a priori general linear models and a data-driven multivariate analysis; white matter microstructure; and white matter connectivity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

有些动物天生就有获得特定的学习技能的倾向。这在工作犬品种中尤其明显，这为详细了解这种普遍现象提供了机会。 例如，边境牧羊犬对绵羊有着天生的兴趣，可以很容易地被训练来放牧牲畜，但对于指示犬、寻回犬和雪橇犬来说，情况并非如此，相反，它们都有自己不同的行为倾向。 这是如何发生的？ 这项研究使用非侵入性神经成像技术对4个品种的220只狗进行了研究，包括真实的世界中的非工作伴侣犬和工作犬。 该研究将检查练习放牧和狩猎等历史工作技能的狗，以及直接影响人类社会的更现代技能，包括导盲犬、服务犬和气味探测犬。 对这些大脑图像的严格分析将确定与先天技能倾向有关的变化以及由学习引起的大脑可塑性。 与这项研究相结合，该项目将支持哈佛和其他地方学生的协调教育和研究经验。 在一个独特的新的本科课程，学生将设计和进行自己的狗的行为实验。 课程材料和视频数据将公开提供，以扩大教育和学生研究的影响超越主办机构。 此外，研究项目的数据将支持各种独立的学生项目。 该项目的开放获取数据集和数据分析工具将支持其他机构的进一步研究。 推广活动将利用狗作为公共利益的“科学大使”，包括与犬类专业部门的知识交流。行为和进化之间的反馈回路自达尔文时代就已被假定，但令人惊讶的是，很少有行为神经科学研究探讨这个话题。 这一提议解决了关键的中心问题，“大脑进化中可塑性和适应性之间的相互作用是什么？” 它探讨了关于这种变化如何在大脑中发生的三种不同假设。工作犬在这个问题上提供了一个独特的控制良好的“自然实验”，因为人类强大而快速的人工选择创造了不同的品种，这些品种具有不同的早期出现的学习行为倾向。 该项目的目标将确定神经相关的先天倾向的特定类别的学习技能积累了几代人的进化变化，大脑可塑性导致学习这些技能在一生中，和神经之间的差异相关的选择历史和最近的技能。 此外，工作犬组织的表现评级将用于识别现实世界工作技能中的个体差异标记，这可能对育种和训练工作产生直接影响。 这些目标将使用来自人类连接组项目的犬优化神经成像序列来实现，包括T1和T2加权MRI、弥散加权成像和静息状态功能连接。全面的全脑分析将使用先验的一般线性模型和数据驱动的多变量分析来检查灰质形态学;白色物质微观结构;和白色物质连通性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。