Centre for the Creative Brain: Inside the Dog Brain - with Guide Dogs UK


This event is FREE and OPEN TO ALL! We welcome undergraduates, postgraduates, animal lovers, scientists, and all curious people. The Centre for the Creative Brain is generously endorsed by St Edmund Hall and the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford.

St Edmund Hall’s Centre for the Creative Brain would like to invite you to our Michaelmas Term event: “Inside the Dog Brain”.

The event will feature talks by Sam Arnsby, an apprentice Guide Dog Mobility Instructor at Irish Guide Dogs, and Dr. Magdalena Boch, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna whose research focuses on neural bases of how dogs and humans perceive and understand each other and the evolution of the canine social brain. This event will be carried out in collaboration with Guide Dogs UK, who will be attending the event with both retired and young guide dogs to demonstrate their abilities put our new knowledge into practice!

About the speakers

Sam Arnsby is an Apprentice Guide Dog Mobility Instructor at Irish Guide Dogs based in Cork, Ireland. Sam has spent nearly six years as a Guide Dog Trainer, starting his career with The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, London, before beginning his new apprenticeship with Irish Guide Dogs. His position allows him the opportunity to work directly with Guide Dog owners at the forefront of the organisation’s work.

Magdalena Boch is a postdoctoral researcher at the Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit at the University of Vienna in close collaboration with the Cognitive Neuroecology Lab at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the use and improvement of neuroimaging in canine research, face and body perception, as well as action perception in dogs, and the evolution of the dog brain.

Guide Dogs UK is a non-profit organisation that provides a range of services with and beyond the dog to help people with sight loss live actively, independently and well. We will be fundraising for this entirely donation-funded charity during the event.