Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

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We can grow our horse’s brain, or we can dumb it down by how we handle them and train them,” says Peters. When our horse is worried, he’s asking us, ‘Am I safe?’” says Zancanella. “When we recognize this, we can answer, ‘Yes, you’re safe,’ by being the calm in the storm and staying present and grounded. This helps them downshift to their parasympathetic nervous system—the rest, digest and relax zone.” Release, Relief, and Soak If the liver is damaged and unable to remove waste toxic substances such as ammonia from the body, the levels of toxic chemicals in the bloodstream may rise and mimic the effects of the brain’s usual chemical messengers (neurotransmitters). This can adversely affect brain function and lead to neurological signs such as depression, staggering, central blindness and weight loss. Around 50% of horses will recover from this stage of liver disease if the underlying cause is treatable.

So your horse might be more distressed than you know. Go easy on him during sensory deprivation—build up time in the indoor arena gradually, ask staff to minimize unpredictable outdoor noises, encourage relaxation, and praise calmness. Introduce scary places with a sniffing expedition on halter and lead, making the adventure as pleasant as possible. Add an experienced equine buddy, if necessary. Showing white around the eyes: usually means they are angry or scared. (White around the eyes is also a normal characteristic of the Appaloosa breed.) You can see some of that range of size in this 1909 photo of Baby Ruth, a small horse owned by C. W. Gillet, standing in front of Pink Parader, a large draft horse owned by Joseph Medill Patterson. (Photo: DN-0007577, Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago Historical Society.) When the brains of domesticated horses are compared to wild horses, the wild brains are up to 30% larger. However, this doesn’t mean that our pet horses are not as intelligent as their wild counterparts! This reduction in brain size is most likely due to them no longer needing the parts of the brain which are required for them to survive in the wild. Does The Size Of a Horse Brain Matter? Neural fatigue—the ways neurons adapt to stimulation and require dynamic change rather than static constancy to drive their action.Equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM) is an uncommon cause of ataxia for California horses. UC Davis researchers recently reported the most common causes of spinal ataxia in horses euthanized and necropsied at the UC Davis veterinary hospital over twelve years. The prevalence of cervical vertebral compressive myopathy (CVCM) was 2.7%, equine neuroaxonal dystrophy/equine degenerative myeloencephalopathy (eNAD/EDM) was 1.3%, trauma was 0.9%, and cases of unknown origin were 2.0%, with the remainder diagnosed as other neurologic diseases. In contrast to older studies, EPM was not a leading cause of ataxia. Two previous studies also reported CVCM and eNAD/EDM among the top three causes of ataxia in horses. As many trainers have found, this is why horses often need to be taught a new skill firstly on one side, and then on the other! They cannot transfer what they have learned directly from one side to the other, although they may learn much faster when it comes to learning on the second side. It may also explain why some horses perform far better on one side than the other. What Are the Parts of the Horses Brain? Due to the lateral placement of their eyes, horses have a very wide visual range of approximately 350 degrees. However, they do have a small blind spot of about 5 degrees directly in front of and behind their heads.

The horse's brain might not be winning any size contests against the human brain, but it's still pretty impressive. Weighing in at about 1.5 pounds, it's like a small but mighty commander-in-chief of the equine body. So, next time you're lifting a small bag of apples, think, "Hey, this is about the weight of my horse's brain!" How Is the Horse's Brain Different from Humans?Horses are large animals with considerably large heads, but do they have a brain to match? Just how big is a horses brain and are they as clever as humans?

In the first place, horse brains come in a variety of sizes; from new-born to adult, from miniature breeds to huge draft horses. Instead, Zancanella relaxes herself, tells her horse that he is safe and ensures they both switch to using their parasympathetic nervous system. Even talented horsemen like Rashid came away from the seminar with new ideas and insights into how to better work with horses.Horses are prey, which is why they are born ready to move. All mammalian brains have the cerebellum; the section that controls coordination, perception, and motor movements. To understand how big a horse brain is, let's briefly look at the cerebellum. First described over 100 years ago, equine headshaking is still not well understood. UC Davis researchers confirmed that the trigeminal nerve, a large nerve that runs across the face, fires too often in affected horses, causing tingling, itching, or burning. It is seasonal in approximately 60% of cases, and signs can be triggered in response to wind, light, or increased exercise intensity. In severe cases, horses may experience self-inflicted trauma or interference with eating, leading to compromised welfare. There is not much data available to help us understand what affects the size of a horse’s brain. The most obvious difference is the size of the horse – smaller horses tend to have smaller brains. This doesn’t seem to affect the overall intelligence of the animal though. In fact, ponies are often regarded as more intelligent than horses.