Giorgio Vallortigara graduated in experimental psychology from the University of Padua, where he also obtained his research doctorate in 1990. In 1991, he moved to the University of Sussex, with a post-doctoral scholarship. where he found cerebral lateralization in lower vertebrates, such as fish and amphibians. Many of his articles have been published in Nature, Science, Current Biology, and PNAS.
He was the scientific director of the Interdepartmental Center for Mind and Brain (CIMEC) in Trento, until the first half of 2015.