New Book Coming Soon!

After years of helping readers understand the complicated processes that unfold between your horses’ ears, Maddy Butcher is coming out with a book. Look for HorseHead: Brain Science & Other Insights in coming months. Dr. Steve Peters contributes. Butcher is founder and publisher of Cayuse […]

What Is Optimal Learning and How Do We Nurture It?

A few years ago, Dr. Steve Peters, a neuropsychologist and director of the Memory Clinic at Utah’s Intermountain Healthcare, was invited to talk to a group of leaders at Cisco Systems, the technology company. The group wanted to know how best to teach Cisco’s complicated […]

Cow Work: Brain Development & Agility Training for Your Horse

Outside of the ranching world, entire populations of riders don’t know and don’t want to know about stockmanship. Ranchers and cowboys are considered reckless, rule-less, a bunch of Yahoos. In my experience, however, some of the savviest horses and riders have ranching backgrounds. These men […]

To Test Smarts: Ask a Horse a Horse Question

If you want to measure a horse’s smarts, don’t give it math problems or ask it to distinguish musical genres. Instead, test its ability to solve horse problems. That’s the message from scientist Frans de Waal of Emory University. Dr. de Waal, who works mostly […]

Wobble Board Science

Most of us will not pursue a neuroscience doctorate in between trail rides and hay tossings. But we can skim equine neurology’s surface to improve our horse-human connection. We’ve talked about dopamine, the feel-good brain chemical. But there are scores of other chemicals in the […]

Can You Spot a Dopamine Release?

Read more about dopamine here. Brain chemicals represent themselves physically and behaviorally. These chemicals are present in horse brains, human brains, and are often referred to as neurotransmitters. The expression of the neurochemical, dopamine, is one of the more commonly observed ones in our horse […]