New Study Uncovers Key Findings on Cognitive Aging in Dogs

In a major advance for canine cognitive research, Dr.

Evan MacLean and his team at the Arizona Cognition Center, part of the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine, have developed a new assessment for monitoring health in aging dogs. Funded by the Dogtopia Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the study offers critical insights into cognitive aging in dogs. The research was conducted as a part of the Dog Aging Project, a nationwide effort to understand the genetic and environmental determinants of healthy aging in dogs.

The study developed a novel set of pet-friendly tasks to measure spatial memory, executive function and social cognition with during the research experiments. Cognitive decline and dementia are increasingly recognized as important problems in dog aging, but have been difficult to study due to a lack of pet-friendly, objective measures of cognitive function. The newly developed tests will play an important role in studies testing interventions to prolong cognitive health and prevent dementia in dogs.