New tricks good for old dogs, cognitive skills study suggests

Researchers at one of the world’s top veterinary schools say older dogs may benefit from touchscreen games designed to keep their brains nimble past their prime.

Cognitive biologists from Vienna’s University of Veterinary Medicine have proposed using touchscreen devices to train older dogs after finding they responded positively to interactive computer games meant to keep them sharp.

“Sometimes with older dogs we might feel that we can just let them retire to the couch and let them sleep all day and that’s fine,” said Lisa Wallis, one of the authors of the report, Agence France-Presse reported Friday. “But you’re not really doing them a kindness.”

Ms. Wallis and her colleagues trained over 200 dogs of varying ages to play a game in which the pooches were prompted to push their snouts against a screen when it showed certain images, earning treats each time they acted accordingly.

Dogs’ dopamine production decreases with age, causing both a decline in memory and motivational drive, Ms. Wallis said. Cognitive training can counter that deterioration, however, and interactive games may benefit older canines otherwise spared from regular training in their later years, she said.

“Touchscreen interaction is usually analyzed in young dogs. But we could show that old dogs also respond positively to this cognitive training method,” Ludwig Huber, the report’s senior author, said when the school’s Messerli Research Institute published their findings last month. “Above all, the prospect of a reward is an important factor to motivate the animals to do something new or challenging.

“The positive feeling created by solving a mental challenge is comparable to the feeling that older people have when they learn something new, doing something they enjoy,” he added. “The brain needs more stimulation and also problems to solve.”

Interactive computer games “has the potential to improve the welfare of older dogs in particular through cognitive enrichment,” the researchers said.

“In the future, collaborations between researchers in animal-computer interaction, dog trainers and cognitive scientists are essential to develop the hardware and software necessary to realize the full potential of this training and enrichment tool,” they wrote.