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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

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
Truly dorsal: nonlinear integration of motion signals is required to account for the responses of pattern cells in rat visual cortex
bioRxiv 2023; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.02.17.528967
Prune and distill: similar reformatting of image information along rat visual cortex and deep neural networks
Adv. Neural Info. Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2022; 35
Rat sensitivity to multipoint statistics is predicted by efficient coding of natural scenes
eLife 2021; 2021; 10:e72081
Rats spontaneously perceive global motion direction of drifting plaids
Plos Comp. Biol. 2021; 17(9): e1009415
All Publications
News
Latest News
Radio and TV
  • Elisabetta Tola e Roberta Fulci
  • Radio3, March 14, 2023

Radio3 Scienza: AI tuoi occhi (intervengono Rita Cucchiara e Davide Zoccolan)

Go to the Link
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, June 7, 2022

Understanding autism spectrum disorders through vision: a new project at SISSA

Davide Zoccolan is among the seven investigators that have been awarded a grant by SFARI to establish Autism Rat Model Consortium.

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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.

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Press Release
  • SISSA News, July 21, 2021

This is how the visual system shows us a more persistent world

An international collaboration elucidates the mechanisms that facilitate accurate identification of moving images. The findings have been published in Nature Communications

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Press Release
  • Hillary Sanctuary
  • EPFL News, July 9, 2021

Tailored optical stimulation for the blind

Our new study, led by our collaborator Silvestro Micera (about using machine learning approaches to optimize optic nerve stimulation for vision restoration), has been published in Patterns.

Continue Reading
Read all news
Gallery
Lab's picture gallery

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

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

Davide & Giulio, March 2019

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].

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.

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

Funding
our support:

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)
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