If your dog loves a good nap, then there’s a chance that it’s also better at learning new skills, according to a new study.
Researchers have found that letting dogs sleep helps them to consolidate new memories – just like humans.
The findings could shed light on how similar the process of ageing in dog brains is to that in human brains.
If your dog loves a good nap, then there’s a good chance that it’s also better at learning new skills, according to a new study. Researchers found that letting dogs sleep helped them to consolidate new memories – just like humans (stock image)
Researchers from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest used EEG monitors to analyse dogs’ brain activity while they slept.
Their analysis revealed that the dogs showed short burst of activity, called sleep spindles, during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep.
The frequency of these sleep spindles was also linked to how well a dog retained new information it had learned before its nap.
Speaking to Live Science, Ivaylo Iotchev, co-lead author of the study, said: ‘It’s the first time that we can actually show this in a dog.’
While previous studies have looked at brain activity during sleep in mice, this is one of the first to analyse dogs.
In their study, the researchers asked 15 dog owners to bring their pets in for three separate sessions.
The dogs, which represented a variety of breeds, first slept while researchers recorded their baseline brain activity.
Next, the dogs were randomly assigned to practice commands they already knew in Hungarian, or to learn those same actions, but in unfamiliar English.
After each session, the dogs were allowed to sleep, while the researchers recorded their brain activity.
The dogs were randomly assigned to practice commands they already knew in Hungarian, or to learn those same actions, but in unfamiliar English. After each session, the dogs were allowed to sleep, while the researchers recorded their brain activity
After the nap, the dogs learning English commands did another session to show how well they’d retained the training.
The scans revealed that dogs with more frequent sleep spindles during their nap were better learners than dogs with fewer sleep spindles.
Beyond dogs, the findings could have implications for humans.
People with depression tend to have more sleep spindles than average, and those with schizophrenia have less.
So understanding these activity bursts may shed light on similarities in brain dysfunction between dogs and humans, according to the researchers.
Dr Iotchev added: ‘The next step is, we will look at a huge sample of dogs to see how sleep spindles change with age.’