Horse brains

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Hi guys,

I'm doing my dissertation about horse psychology and whether horses register objects with just one half of their brain at a time.
I plan on making a course of 'scary' objects and leading a horse past it, measuring heart rate, waiting, then leading them past it again on same rein (heart rate should decrease as seen it once) then doing same on other rein. If increases again shows didnt register with that half of brain.

Does anyone have any experience with this kinda thing? Or know of any books / journels / websites about the horse's brain that may help?

Thanks :) xx
 
There have been some studies that horses can count. There have also been studies about food choice and memory, might be worth googling - think the count one was Essex Uni?
 
thanks will have a look :) there seems to be a few websites with people talking about the horse's brain being similar to the human brain and books on training, saying that things have to be taught to the horse on both sides for him to understand it e.g. mounting.

think i chose a bit of a difficult subject to do!
 
thankyou :) that looks really interesting, will read through it all and have a look at his books as need a starting point so need to know of any exisiting research about this kind of thing.

thanks :) x
 
Horses can see independently out of each eye - so if you have a spooky thing in the corner of the school (for example), and you've managed to get them going happily past it on one rein, you'll often have to go through a similar process on the other rein, as they are seeing it with a new eye.
 
You have to be very careful measuring HR because so many other factors can affect HR it will be hard to make your results reliable. Therefore the increase in HR may not necessarily be due to the horse not registering the spooky object with that half of brain so you cannot really assume that.

Also remember left eye to right brain, right eye to left brain.

Hope this helps you a bit :) Let us know how you get on.
 
Andrew Maclean is a good source, as is Paul McGreevy, who has done some research into laterality.

As for the question of separate left/right halves and the need to relearn the same lesson on the other side, this myth seems to stem from the long-held belief that the horse lacks (or has a much reduced) corpus callosum - a brain structure that connects left and right hemispheres. It turns out this is untrue, and horses have a functional corpus callosum. Dr Evelyn Hanggi has done some work on this (the last two links are to her own papers):

http://theequinist.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-horses-see-facts-and-fallacies.html
http://www.ecpmag.com/1webmagazine/2011/08aug/content/second_glance/horses-vision.asp
http://www.equineresearch.org/support-files/hanggi-thinkinghorse.pdf
http://frecklescommand.bravehost.com/Interocular_transfer_of_learning_in_equids.pdf

Here's some more reading:
http://www.newrider.com/forum/showthread.php?t=117967
 
thanks so much everyone :) will have a read through alll the links you've sent me :) i'm just starting the intro now.. think this could be a long subject!!
 
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