Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti
Universita' Degli Studi di Parma, Italy
Curator and author
Author
Featured Author: Giacomo Rizzolatti
Giacomo Rizzolatti was born April 28, 1937, in Kiev, Ukraine. He received his degree in medicine from the University of Padua, Italy, where he specialized in neurology. After postdoctoral work at the University of Pisa's Institute of Physiology, Dr. Rizzolatti joined the University of Parma as an Assistant Professor in Human Physiology. In 1975 he was promoted to Full Professor of Human Physiology, his present position. In 2002 he was made Director of the University of Parma's Department of Neuroscience.
Among his affiliations, Prof. Rizzolatti has been President of both the European Brain and Behavior Society and the Italian Society for Neuroscience, is a Foreign Associate Member of the French Academy of Sciences, and has been awarded honorary foreign membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. For his achievements he has received numerous awards, including the Golgi Prize for Physiology, the George Miller Award, the Feltrinelli Prize for Medicine, the Herlitzka Prize for Physiology, and the Grawemeyer Prize for Psychology. Prof. Rizzolatti has received honorary doctoral degrees from Claude Bernard University in France and Saint-Petersburg State University in Russia.
The main focus of Dr. Rizzolatti's research is the motor system and its role in cognitive function. Most recently, he has been studying the mirror neuron system using brain imaging techniques in humans and using recordings of single neuron activity in non-human primates. For more information, visit http://www.unipr.it/arpa/mirror/english/staff/rizzolat.htm.
Scholarpedia articles:
- Mirror Neurons, Scholarpedia, 3(1):2055 (2008)
(Featured column prepared by Abdellatif Nemri)
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