Research Neuroscience

Neurodevelopment and Comparative Cognition (NeuroDevCo)

Research Program

Neuroscience

Leaders

NeuroDevelopment and Comparative Cognition investigates cognitive and neural processes in human and non-human species, with a special focus on how early-life experiences (e.g., language) shape brain development and cognitive functions. The ongoing research is primarily oriented at uncovering the evolutionary origins of the mechanisms supporting early language learning, integrating methodologies from Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience and Biology.

Latest publications

Marcout C., Santolin C., Giurfa M. & Paoli M. Statistical olfactory learning in honeybees. Bioarxiv, 2025.

Santolin, C., Zacharaki, K., Toro, J. M., & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2024). Abstract processing of syllabic structures in early infancy. Cognition, 244, 105663.

Tribak, I. G., Ciarrusta, J., Santolin, C., Zhang, F., Mayoral, X., Angulo-Chavira, A. Q., ... & Durduran, T. (2024). Perception of speech structures in six month-old infants: a multimodal study. Optical Tomography and Spectroscopy (pp. JS4A-30).

Santolin, C., Frey, C., & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2024). Learning phonetic categories in infancy: The role of word-context information. Infant Behavior and Development, 76, 101961.

Santolin, C., Crespo-Bojorque, P., Sebastian-Galles, N., & Toro, J. M. (2023). Sensitivity to the sonority sequencing principle in rats (Rattus norvegicus). Scientific Reports, 13(1), 17036.

Zhang F., Ciarrusta J., Zacharaki K., Eken A., Santolin C., Senciales D., Pagliazzi M., Colomer N., Sebastian Galles N. & Durduran T. (2022). Integration of Functional Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy and Electroencephalography for Measuring Task-Triggered Brain Activation in Infants. Physics in Biology and Medicine. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11851/11229

Santolin, C., Garcia‐Castro, G., Zettersten, M., Sebastian‐Galles, N., & Saffran, J. R. (2021). Experience with research paradigms relates to infants' direction of preference. Infancy, 26(1), 39-46.

Sebastian-Galles, N., & Santolin, C. (2020). Bilingual acquisition: The early steps. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2(1), 47-68.

Santolin, C., Rosa-Salva, O., Lemaire, B. S., Regolin, L., & Vallortigara, G. (2020). Statistical learning in domestic chicks is modulated by strain and sex. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 15140.

Scientific objectives

  1. Investigating linguistic universal principles as mechanisms to process speech at birth and within the first year of life, in healthy populations. We are using a range of experimental designs and methods (see next section) to investigate both neural and behavioral bases of such mechanisms. We are also investigating whether mechanisms for speech processing are rooted into general sensory processing by using non-speech sounds and vibro-tactile inputs that mimic the structure of natural language.
  2. Testing the phylogenetic origins of the mechanisms for speech processing in non-human species. To draw cross-species comparison, we are testing rats (Rattus norvegicus) as animal model, with similar (speech and non-speech) inputs used with human newborns and infants. We plan to expand the range of species used as animal models to songbirds which are a great model to study the neural circuits of speech perception.
  3. Applying our experimental designs and methods to clinical populations characterized by neonatal brain infections affecting the development of the central nervous system (e.g., cytomegalovirus). This would be key for early detection of speech perception issues that may be caused by such brain infections, and to prepare early interventions.

Area/Field of expertise

The research conducted by the NeuroDevCo group lies at the crossroad of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Linguistics and Comparative Cognition. We used functional Near- Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to look at the neural hemodynamic activity during speech processing in healthy newborns and infants. We also use behavioral techniques such as eyetracking to record infants' gaze movements and pupil dilation while listening to speech sounds (e.g., syllables, words) and non-speech sounds. As for animal models, we are currently working with rats (Rattus norvegicus) using conditioning procedures to test the animals' abilities to process similar speech and non-speech sounds. We are also involved in side projects with honeybees (Apis mellifera) in collaboration with Sorbonne University to study the learning of olfactory patterns that mimic basic structure of human language. We also conduct simulation studies using computational models that take audio as input to investigate under what conditions models achieve a performance similar to infants and rats in experimental tasks. We are interested in how much language input do models need to succeed (e.g., at parsing syllables from speech), and what features of the acoustic input are critical for the model to succeed, and whether there are differences with respect to humans and rats.

Group members

Projects

Project name:
GALA: Gates to Language
Leader
Chiara Santolin
Funding entities:
European Commission
Code
101115991
Starting - finishing date:
2024 - 2029
Project name:
PFEC0012 - Coordinación PFE00132_GALA_ChiaraSantolin
Leader
Chiara Santolin
Code
PFEC0012
Starting - finishing date:
2024 - 2029
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