Dopamine In Dog Training: Anticipation, Rewards, And the Transfer Of Value #174

Shaped by Dog with Susan Garrett

DogsThat

Education, Puppy, Recallers, Animalbehaviour, Dogs, Kids & Family, Pets, Dogtraining, Dogsthat, Petmanners, Susangarrett, Pets & Animals

4.8 • 679 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Visit us at shapedbydog.com

We’re geeking out the topic of dopamine in dog training and how it impacts a dog’s motivation. Dopamine is a type of neurotransmitter, and there’s a lot of research on its relation to the drive to seek out happiness. Now, you might be wondering what it has to do with dog training but to make sure our dogs want to work with us, it’s something we need to know, and it relates directly to my training protocols and transfer of value.

In the episode you'll hear:

• How and when dopamine gets released in a dog’s brain.
• About an experiment by Robert Sapolsky on dopamine spikes with a cue, behaviour, and reward.
• How a dopamine spike would relate to me and vegan chocolate chip cookies.
• That dopamine relates to the transfer of value in dog training (the thing before the thing).
• What the research shows about the difference between luring and shaping and dopamine.
• About research on blocking dopamine and how it impacts motivation.
• What a suppressed level of dopamine does and how that relates to dogs.
• What I’ve noticed with my young dog This! and how I’m particular about her training.
• About foods and supplements that support healthy dopamine production.
• The effects of too much dopamine and what I observed with my dog Buzz.
• How I give my dogs a calm walk once a week for a dopamine detox.
• Why to look at your dog training to see if your dog is getting healthy dopamine spikes.

Resources:

1. Paper (PDF): A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward - Authors: Schultz, W.; Dayan, P.; Montague, P.R. - http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~dayan/papers/sdm97.pdf
2. YouTube Video: Wolfram Schultz - Dopamine: from movement via reward to rational choice - https://youtu.be/pLqgakCXW5Q
3. YouTube Video: Dopamine Jackpot! Sapolsky on the Science of Pleasure - https://youtu.be/axrywDP9Ii0
4. Paper: Dopamine reward prediction error coding- Author: Wolfram Schultz, MD, FRS - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4826767/
5. Article: Why does the brain have a reward prediction error? – Author: Mark Humphries - https://medium.com/the-spike/why-does-the-brain-have-a-reward-prediction-error-6d52773bd9e7
6. YouTube Playlist: Reinforcement, Permissions and Transfer of Value in Dog Training with Susan Garrett - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLphRRSxcMHy1IUj_4P54q2PIuLNtnXjFO
7. Paper: Dopamine Modulates Effort-Based Decision-Making in Rats – Authors: Mark E. Bardgett, Melissa Depenbrock, Nathan Downs, Megan Points, Leonard Green - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791340/
8. Book: Shaping Success by Susan Garrett - https://dogsthat.com/product/shaping-success-2/
9. Watch this Episode of Shaped by Dog on YouTube - https://youtu.be/FMzI6VzIU_w

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Today, my friends, I invite you to geek out with me on the topic of dopamine in dog training.
0:06.5	That's right. The dopamine, the neurotransmitter that people have always thought was the feel-good
0:12.0	chemical that our brain released might not be just that.
0:15.7	Okay. Hi, I'm Susan Garrett.
0:27.0	Welcome to Shape by Dog.
0:28.4	And as I mentioned off the top, dopamine, which is the neurotransmitter that is released
0:32.7	when people do things like amphetamines.
0:36.4	It's always been assumed that they did it because it creates
0:39.9	a euphoric feeling of happiness. Well, research in the last 15 or 20 years has actually led to us
0:46.5	knowing now that it isn't so much about happiness. It's more about the drive to seek out happiness.
0:53.4	And why is that important to us who train
0:55.5	dogs? Because in order to make dog training addictive to our dogs, we have to ensure
1:01.0	that our dogs are getting that dopamine release when they are working with us. So,
1:06.1	today's podcast, I'm going to do a deep dive to tell you about the science that has led me to the place
1:12.6	I am with my dog training. Over the last few weeks, I have been doing this massive deep dive
1:18.4	into the literature. I'm going to give a shout out to Dr. Pamela Reed, who when I reach out to her
1:22.5	and said, hey, I'm looking for this particular paper. She actually found one. And it was one that I first heard about
1:28.2	back in 2012. I was sitting in a lecture by Stephen Lindsay. He was up at the University of
1:33.3	Guelph giving this lecture where he mentioned a paper by Dr. Schultz. He was doing an experiment
1:41.3	where they actually were able to measure the dopamine release
1:47.3	in the brains of monkeys.
1:49.9	And it was fascinating what they found out.
	...

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