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Dog Intelligence: Learn Why Adult Dogs Can Lose Up To 25% Of Their Brain Mass

It’s an amazing thought that a puppy’s brain and response pattern are almost exactly the same as an adult dog after only seven weeks of being alive. Using an EEG this statistic is able, to be recorded.  Thinking that at seven weeks old the puppy would have the ability to learn the same as an adult dog would be normal after knowing the EEG findings. However, Regardless of what the findings show this is not completely factual.

At this age their learning ability and coordination skills need to be practiced repeatedly the same as any other motor skill even if their brain may be fully developed. The way they would learn is very similar to how a person would learn a new skill. In fact, humans and dogs are identical in many ways when it comes to how their intelligence develops over the years and throughout their life span.

As a human being, all of our intellectualism increases between our infancy and our mid-adolescent years. Although this change happens rapidly brain measure display that between the ages of 16-27 there is little increase in our ability to gain more intelligence and it usually peaks when a person has reached their latter teenage years.

After these years there is a slow and gradual decline of fluid intelligence. However, there is what is called “crystallized intelligence” that is based on what a person actually learns, that does not reach its peak in people until around their mid-40s. Some people actually maintain a slow increase in crystallized intelligence throughout their entire life. Dogs are much the same way. Their brains experience almost an identical pattern except for the fact that their lifespans are considerably shorter.

Brain Changes In The Older Dog

Once a dog starts to reach his older years, there are very noticeable changes in their physiology. When a dog reaches the age of four or five years old, the brain starts to lose weight at a large rate of almost 5% for every year that goes by.  For example, the brain of a healthy German Shepherd who is 12 years old may weigh almost 30% less than it did when this dog was five years old.

Much of this decrease in brain mass is the result of brain cells that are shrinking and breaking down.  And because neural connections become lost, information travels at a very slow pace within the dog's nervous system. This invariably causes delayed reactions and slow response time to noises and commands.