Cognition and Emotions in Non-Human Animals: Neural mechanisms, behavioral advances, neurobiological assessment, and implications for animal welfare

The study of emotions in non-human animals has advanced considerably in recent decades, integrating findings from affective neuroscience, comparative cognition, and animal welfare science. Recognition of the capacity for emotional experience across diverse species has challenged traditional paradigms, revealing a high degree of complexity in affective processes and their direct relevance to decision-making, attention, memory, motivation, and judgment.

Cognitive psychology and behavioral neuroscience have demonstrated that emotions are not merely reactive states but play a central role in modulating cognitive processes, influencing how stimuli are perceived, processed, and evaluated. Recent studies confirm that animal affective experience can be investigated using objective, non-invasive methodologies, enabling a functional and evolutionary understanding of the cognition–emotion interface.

This Research Topic aims to gather cutting-edge research addressing the neural, physiological, and behavioral mechanisms that underlie emotions and cognition in non-human animals, encompassing both vertebrate and invertebrate species. The objective is to deepen our understanding of how these processes interact, how they are expressed across different taxa, and what implications they hold for the assessment, management, and promotion of animal welfare. This collection welcomes manuscripts focused on a wide range of applied contexts, including companion, laboratory, and farm species, as well as wildlife.

We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from the fields of neuroscience, ethology, physiology, comparative psychology, and animal welfare science. We invite original research articles, systematic reviews, theoretical hypotheses, case studies, and perspective papers addressing topics such as:

• Interactions between affective states and cognitive processes
• Neurobiological mechanisms of emotion across species
• Sentience, affective consciousness, and their connection to animal welfare
• Non-invasive physiological and behavioral methods for assessing emotional states
• Cognitive approaches and new paradigms for evaluating animal well-being
• Influence of emotion on attention, memory, and judgment in the short and long term
• Application of emotional knowledge in welfare, training, enrichment, and conservation contexts
• Comparative models for studying emotion and cognition
• Strategies to mitigate stress-induced detriment by promoting positive emotional states
• Evolutionary perspectives on animal emotions

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Registered Report
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Animal emotions, Affective cognition, Neuroethology, Sentience and animal welfare, Comparative cognitive psychology, Non-invasive physiological assessment, Emotional behavior, Comparative neuroscience, Positive and negative affective states, Ethology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.