The comparative approach of the Laboratory of Animal Cognition is a cross-domain link of the multiple souls animating the Department of Life Sciences.
Specifically, the present research questions are centered on the innateness and the development of core cognitive functions. By comparing a range of animal models while performing similar tasks, it is investigated what organisms are endowed with which core knowledge (and why), what core function needs instead maturation or learning to show up in its complete form and what is the connection between impairment of such predisposed building blocks of cognition and cognitive deficits during development.
Current projects
1) musical preferences rooted in biological predispositions
Are there basic musical features appreciated by all organisms? If so, why? For what reason did they evolve? The project investigates the common basic mechanisms shared between species by parallel studies conducted in singing and non-singing birds (from parrots to domestic chickens), higher vertebrates and lower invertebrates (from dogs to crayfish). The hypothesis holds that organisms could be endowed with mechanisms that probably evolved initially for the recognition of living organisms at birth. Such innate acoustic abilities would represent the basis of acoustic processing that, in other species, bloom in musical and linguistic skills, and deficits in these acoustic building blocks could lead to linguistic difficulties and disorders.
2) higher cognition in lower invertebrates
How high is cognitive functioning in low invertebrates? By testing crayfish abilities to escape and learn by observing expert conspecifics, the project intends to understand their capability to use the concepts of the intuitive physics and their possibility to take advantage of social forms of learning. Indeed, the Louisiana crayfish is an invasive and solitary species but it could well display sophisticated types of learning in order to surpass autochthone organisms. Particular attention is devoted to the analysis of the role of individual differences in tackling different cognitive tasks.
3) development of cerebral lateralization
What are the genetic and environmental factors determining cerebral lateralization and behavioural asymmetries? Studies on the young of the domestic fowl can help understanding the role of environmental stimulation on predetermined genetic factors, both in the embryo (light stimulation in egg in different time windows) and post-hatching (rearing with individuals of the same/different degree of lateralization). The analysis of brain tissue can be used to unveil light stimulation effects on epiphyseal and habenular areas and their role in the establishment of cerebral asymmetries.
4) basic mechanisms underlying habituation
How do we learn to ignore irrelevant information that is repeatedly encountered? One way to approach this mystery is to study a basic form of learning: habituation. The scope of this project is to explore different characteristics of habituation adopting a comparative perspective, with special reference to the domestic chick’s learning abilities. Some aspects of interest deal with testing unconventional hypotheses such as the associative nature of habituation, age-related changes in the organisms’ learning ability and, more generally, the link between habituation and cognition and emotion. Finally, particular attention is devoted to challenging the predictions of recent predictive coding models with a double purpose: to test whether the ability to predict stimulus occurrence represents a shared trait among species; to integrate classical models of habituation with modern predictive models.
