Dogs do it all for the military: sniff for bombs, detect narcotics and rescue hapless humans. But to recruit the best canine squadmates, the Pentagon's blue-sky researchers are working on a plan to scan their brains – and figure out how dogs think. Belly rubs won't cut it anymore.

According to a new research solicitation from Darpa, the project – adorably called FIDOS, for "Functional Imaging to Develop Outstanding Service-Dogs" – touts the idea of using magnetic image resonators (or MRIs) to "optimize the selection of ideal service dogs" by scanning their brains to find the smartest candidates. "Real-time neural feedback" will optimize canine training. That adds up to military pooches trained better, faster and – in theory – at a lower cost than current training methods of $20,000, using the old-fashioned methods of discipline-and-reward.

Though it's still very much in the research stage, the plan owes many of its underpinnings to several recent discoveries about the brains of our canine friends.

Last year, Emory University neuroscientist Greg Berns and his colleagues trained dogs to sit unrestrained inside an MRI machine, shown hand signals associated with a food reward, and then scanned. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers noticed increased brain activity in the dogs' ventral caudate, a region of the brain associated with the neurotransmitter dopamine.

In their study, published last April in Public Library of Science One, Berns and his colleagues concluded that the activity was due to a "trained association to a food reward; however, it is also possible that some component of social reward contributes to the response." Anyone who's ever held out a piece of chicken to a well-behaved pup already knows that dogs like getting fed when they're good. And dogs are highly social animals, closely adapted to human behavior given a shared evolutionary history. But the Emory University team was the first to observe this specific brain activity using MRIs.

That seems to have perked Darpa's interest. (The researchers have even kicked around the idea of using machines to automate puppy training.) The agency believes it may be possible to screen "high-value service dogs ... based on their neutral activation to specific handler training cues," Darpa notes in the solicitation. The idea is that dogs who show greater brain activity when given such cues will be "faster and easier to train" than dogs that show less activity. And instead of merely using approximations of something the dog wants, to make the dog do something else, handlers could fine-tune their techniques to more closely match the chemical responses happening inside the dog's head.

Neuroimaging may also help spot "brain hyper-social dogs." These very social dogs, once scanned and located, could be selected for use in rehabilitative therapy for soldiers exhibiting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.

One way to locate those pups, the solicitation suggests, is to scan dogs that show "neurophysiological markers of handler stress and anxiety." That hypothesis is roughly based on research showing that dogs can follow along to the human gaze and finger-pointing, and how dogs catch yawns from their owners at a greater rate than strangers – a possible hint of a canine theory of mind, or the ability to understand and interpret human intentions.

Thus, when a handler is showing symptoms of trauma in the form of stress, the dogs that sense it best could make for ideal therapy partners. And in all areas of military pooch-work, the particular breeds sought by the military – like the Belgian Malinois – are highly selective: a "scarce canine resource" that needs to be managed carefully.

Fortunately, getting dogs inside an MRI chamber shouldn't be too much of a problem, as pups can be trained in a few months to obediently rest inside, all cute and snugly-like.