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.

一些动物具有先天的倾向，可以获取特定的学习技能收集。这在工作狗品种中尤其明显，这为详细了解这种一般现象提供了机会。例如，边境牧羊犬对绵羊具有先天的兴趣，并且可以轻松地接受牲畜的训练，但是对于指针，猎犬和雪橇犬而言并非如此，而每个人都有自己的不同行为倾向。这是怎么发生的？拟议的研究使用无创神经影像探索了这一问题，包括4种犬种，包括现实世界中的一群非工作伴侣犬和工作犬。该研究将检查狗练习历史工作技能，例如放牧和狩猎，以及直接影响人类社会的现代技能，包括导犬，服务犬和稀缺狗。对这些大脑图像的严格分析将确定与先天技能易感性以及学习导致的大脑可塑性有关的变化。该项目与这项研究集成在一起，将为哈佛大学和其他地方的学生提供协调的教育和研究经验。在独特的新本科课程中，学生将设计并进行自己的狗行为实验。课程材料和视频数据将公开使用，以将教育和学生研究影响扩展到主机机构之外。此外，研究项目的数据将支持各种独立的学生项目。该项目的开放访问数据集和数据分析工具将支持其他机构的进一步研究。外展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。自达尔文时代以来，行为和进化之间的反馈回路已被定位，但令人惊讶的是，行为神经科学研究很少证明这一主题。该提议解决了一个关键的中心问题：“脑进化中可塑性与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个不同的假设。在这个问题上，工作犬提供了一个独特的“自然实验”，因为人类的强大而快速的人工选择创造了不同的品种，具有不同的早期出现的倾向。该项目的目的将确定对跨越几代变化的特定学术技能的先天倾向的神经相关性，在一生中学习这些技能而导致的大脑可塑性以及历史选择和更近期技能的神经相关性之间的差异。此外，工作狗组织的绩效等级将用于确定现实世界中工作技能中个体变异的标志，这可能会直接应用于育种和培训工作。这些目标将使用人类ConnectMe项目的犬类优化的神经影像序列实现，包括T1-和T2加权MRI，扩散加权成像以及静止状态功能连接性。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元分析检查灰质形态计量学；白质微观结构；该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准评估来反映NSF的法定任务。