Research Topic

Estimating the number of perceived elements is a widespread ability across the animal kingdom, as it is fundamental for survival and supports adaptive behaviours such as estimating prey density, avoiding predators, evaluating mating opportunities, and optimizing foraging strategies. It also represents a foundational capacity underlying more complex numerical abilities, including symbolic and mathematical competences. Recent research has highlighted the existence of specialised neural substrates and neuronal populations selectively involved in numerical processing, which appear to be shared across primates, birds, and fish.

Our research adopts a translational cross-species approach spanning insects (like bees and crickets), fish (like zebrafish and archerfish), chicks, and human infants, with the aim of identifying conserved mechanisms underlying numerical cognition across evolution and development. In our laboratory, we combine behavioural investigations with state-of-the-art neural techniques, including immediate early gene expression analyses and single-neuron electrophysiology, to investigate the neural circuits supporting numerical cognition. We also collaborate with international groups employing advanced approaches such as light-sheet imaging and optogenetics for the functional and causal investigation of numerosity-selective neural units, alongside EEG recordings in human newborns.

By integrating evidence from healthy and genetically impaired models, such as genetically modified “dyscalculic-like” zebrafish lines, we aim to better understand the mechanisms underlying numerical information processing and how these processes may be altered in conditions such as developmental dyscalculia. 

Many animals with laterally placed eyes exhibit functional brain lateralization, with the two hemispheres contributing differently to perception, learning, and social behavior. Our research investigates how this asymmetry shapes cognition and behavior in both domestic chicks and cattle, building on established findings in comparative neurobiology.

In domestic chicks, we examine how visual lateralization influences attentional processes, exploratory behavior, and responses to novelty, taking advantage of their largely crossed visual pathways that allow selective stimulation of each hemisphere. In cows, we study how lateralized behavioral responses are associated with emotional processing, particularly in relation to stress, social interactions, and exposure to unfamiliar or potentially threatening environments.

Across both species, animals often display consistent left–right biases when monitoring conspecifics, predators, or novel stimuli, suggesting that hemispheric specialization enhances efficiency in processing different classes of information. By integrating behavioral, cognitive, and welfare-oriented perspectives across avian and mammalian models, our work aims to identify conserved evolutionary principles of brain lateralization and translate these insights into improved animal welfare and management strategies.

Precocial avian species such as the domestic chick (Gallus gallus domesticus) provide a powerful model for investigating the origins of social cognition, as highlighted in the work of Vallortigara and colleagues. Because chicks are able to express complex social behaviors immediately after hatching, before any meaningful visual experience, they allow researchers to dissociate innate predispositions from learned influences.

Our research focuses on the neural and behavioral mechanisms underlying spontaneous social preferences in visually naïve chicks, including their early sensitivity to face-like configurations, biological motion, and socially relevant cues. Consistent with previous findings, chicks show robust predispositions toward animate stimuli, suggesting the presence of evolutionarily conserved perceptual biases that guide early social orienting.

Using a combination of behavioral paradigms and neurobiological techniques, we investigate the brain circuits involved in both the perception and production of socially meaningful actions, with particular attention to hemispheric specialization and possible mirror-like mechanisms. Overall, this approach aims to clarify the developmental and evolutionary foundations of social cognition in the absence of prior experience

Our research group is committed to translating fundamental findings into practical applications with real-world impact. Building on work in comparative cognition and developmental neuroscience, we develop interdisciplinary projects that bridge basic science and applied innovation.

One project investigates whether knowledge of brain lateralization in dairy cows can be used to improve animal welfare and milk quality through more tailored stabling and management conditions that take into account responses to positive and negative stimuli.

A second line of research focuses on early screening for autism spectrum disorder through an innovative “mobile laboratory” infant cradle, based on gaze patterns toward social stimuli that have been shown to differ from birth in infants at varying risk for autism.

We are also developing game-based tablet tools for the early detection and support of developmental dyscalculia, targeting children’s difficulties in forming spatial representations of numerical magnitude and enabling early, play-based intervention.

Together, these projects illustrate our aim to turn basic research into innovative tools for animal welfare, early diagnosis, and education.