Fresh link between dogs’ smell and vision revealed

Dogs’ sense of smell is integrated with their vision and other unique parts of the brain, a study has found and provided the first documentation for the revelation.

Researchers at Cornell University performed MRI scans on 23 healthy dogs and used diffusion tensor imaging, an advanced neuroimaging technique, to locate the dog brain’s white matter pathways, the information highways of the brain.

They found connections between the olfactory bulb and the limbic system and piriform lobe, where the brain processes memory and emotion, which are similar to those in humans, as well as never-documented connections to the spinal cord and the occipital lobe that are not found in humans.

“It was really consistent,”  Pip Johnson, assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine said.

“And size-wise, these tracts were really dramatic compared to what is described in the human olfactory system, more like what you’d see in our visual systems.”

They can still play fetch and navigate their surroundings much better than humans with the same condition,” Johnson added. “Knowing there’s that information freeway going between those two areas could be hugely comforting to owners of dogs with incurable eye diseases.”