Sissa Logo

Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience

Credits: Marco Gigante

Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience

Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience

Credits: Eugenio Piasini

Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience

Credits: Fosca Zoccolan⭐️

Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience

Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience

Davide Zoccolan’s Visual Neuroscience Lab
SISSA / PhD In Cognitive Neuroscience

The lab is affiliated to the Neuroscience Area of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste (Italy) and its activities contribute to SISSA PhD program in Cognitive Neuroscience. The lab was established in 2009 thanks to the support of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and of the Compagnia di San Paolo. Since then, it has received the support of several funding bodies (see list at the bottom of this page), including the European Research Council.

Our research aims at understanding the neuronal mechanisms underlying visual object recognition, using a combination of psychophysics, electrophysiology, and computational modeling.

Latest Seminars
Prune and Distill: Similar reformatting of image information along rat visual cortex and deep neural networks
Nov 28, 2022 play video
Rat perceptual sensitivity to visual textures defined by multipoint correlations
Nov 29, 2021 play video
Causal adaptation of V1 simple cells to the dynamics of the visual input
Sep 30, 2021 play video
Interfacce cervello-macchina e l’intelligenza artificiale
Sep 26, 2021 play video
All Seminars
Latest Publications
Unraveling the complexity of rat object vision requires a full convolutional network-and beyond
Biorxiv 2024; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.08.593112
Unsupervised learning of mid-level visual representations
Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 2024; 84:102834
Truly pattern: Nonlinear integration of motion signals is required to account for the responses of pattern cells in rat visual cortex
Science Adv. 2023; 9 (45), eadh4690
Prune and distill: similar reformatting of image information along rat visual cortex and deep neural networks
Adv. Neural Info. Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022; 35
All Publications
Workshop announcement: TEX 2023 - Efficient coding and processing for perception and action
Jul 4 – 6, 2023
SISSA - International School for Advanced Studies
Read More
News
Latest News
Radio and TV
  • , November 6, 2024

A me gli occhi - Mostra al Museo Sartorio di Trieste

Chiara Di Domenico, Lorenzo Tausani, Paolo Muratore and Sebastiano Quintavalle, del Laboratorio di Neuroscienze Visive della SISSA, partecipano all'inaugurazione della mostra "A me gli occhi" presso il museo Sartorio di Trieste con un seminario divulgativo sulla fondamenti della percezione visiva.

Go to the Link
Popular Press
  • Gianluca Dotti
  • Wired, March 13, 2024

Lo scambio

Le scoperte della neurobiologia su come funziona il nostro cervello migliorano il lavoro sull'intelligenza artificiale. E viceversa.

Continue Reading
Radio and TV
  • Simona Regina
  • RAI, November 21, 2023

Il cervello che vede - Radar (intervista a Davide Zoccolan)

(andare al min 20:30)

Go to the Link
Press Release
  • SISSA News, November 13, 2023

Similar to primates: how rodents can see moving objects

Our new study, revealing the existence of truly integrative pattern cells in rat visual cortex, has been published in Science Advances.

Continue Reading
Radio and TV
  • Mariantonietta Firmani
  • Parallelo42 contemporary art, February 27, 2023

podcast Contemporaneamente (intervista a Davide Zoccolan e Marinella Senatore)

Go to the Link
Press Release
  • SISSA News, December 7, 2021

Efficient coding: how the brain optimizes allocation of resources

Our new study (in collaboration with Eugenio Piasini and Vijay Balasubramanian from Penn) about rat perceptual sensitivity to texture statistics, has been published in eLife.

Continue Reading
Read all news
Gallery
Lab's picture gallery

The lab, March 2011 (just transferred in the new SISSA building). From left to right: Sina, Chetan, Federica, Davide, Alessandro, and Alireza.

The HFSP “Neuroscience of knowledge” team (Dec 2013, Eilat, Israel). From left to right: Mathew Diamond, Winrich Freiwald, Haim Sompolinsky, Davide Zoccolan, and Rodrigo Quian Quiroga.

The lab, Dec 2015. From left to right, top row: Walter, Daniele, Alessandro, Federica, Vladimir, Davide, Margherita, Nader, and Natalia; bottom row: Alessio, Rosilari, xx, Eis, Giulio, and Luca.

Some of SISSA’s ERC winners, spring 2017. From left to right: Gianluigi Rozza, Jacopo Stoppa, Davide Zoccolan, Davide Crepaldi, Domenica Bueti, Giovanni Bussi, and Mathew Diamond. Picture taken from Platinum, July, 24 - see article [IT] [ENG].

Davide & Giulio, March 2019

The lab, Oct 2021. From left to right, top row: Mattia, Paolo, Riccardo, Angelina, Davide; bottom row: Valeryia, Sogand, Daria, Laura, Silene

A few old friends are back to town! Former and current lab members at a dinner in Cavana on September 2022. From left: Giulio, Natalia, Alessio, Margherita, Angelina, Mattia, Paolo, Felicia, Riccardo and Davide

Rovereto, Oct 2023: Angelina, Davide and Chiara celebrating Chiara's successful Master thesis defense

Nov 2023: the lab (Davide, Paolo, Mattia and Sebastiano) playing with the new motorized stages for the Neuropixel probes

Jan 31, 2024: Davide and Paolo celebrating Paolo's successful PhD thesis defense

Apr 2024: Davide and Sina at SISSA cafeteria after Sina's beautiful talk on Compositional Tasks and Shared Neural Subspaces. Nice to welcome back one of the very first students of the lab!

Sept 19, 2024: Chiara, Paolo, Lorenzo e Sebastiano at the seminar they delivered at the art exhibition "A me gli occhi" @ Museo Sartorio in Trieste

Rome, Sept 25, 2024: current (Lorenzo, Paolo, Sebastiano) and former (Giulio and Alessio) members of SISSA Vision Lab, plus other young SISSA scientists (Beatriz and Tadeo) reunited at the first Conference of the Italian Network for Computational Neuroscience.

Funding
our support:

Currently active

MUR PRIN 2022
Partners: Giorgio Vallortigara, CIMEC, University of Trento (PI) and Judit Gervain, University of Padova

Currently active

Partenariato PNRR PE8 - AGE-IT
Spoke 2 (2023)

Currently active

Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI)
Autism Rat Models Consortium (2022)

Former support

European Research Council (ERC)
Proof of Concept (2019)

Former support

European Research Council (ERC)
Consolidator Grant (2013)

Former support

Human Frontier Science Program
Grant (2013)

Former support

FVG-R2B: Ricerca per la competitività dell’impresa (2013)

Former support

Young SISSA Scientist
Grant (2011)

Former support

Marie Curie International
Reintegration Grant (2010)

Former support

Compagnia di San Paolo:
Programma Neuroscienze 2008/2009

Former support

Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei - Compagnia di San Paolo Grant (2008)
Designed by Promoscience