The empathic screen: interview with Professor Vittorio Gallese

There are moments in the history of scientific discoveries brought to fruition, in which the answers are found not only to assumptions made by scientists at the beginning of the search, but also to other questions that were not subject to direct investigation.
These questions – albeit unexpected – are welded so the initial applications and the evidence found as a whole not only close the circle of the research undertaken, but open and unfold new horizons of research.
This is the case of mirror neurons, the discovery of the now famous team of Professor Giacomo Rizzolatti, of which was also part Professor Vittorio Gallese, who has demonstrated the existence of particular motor cells of the brain that are activated not only when performing of movements and actions, but are able to perform a perceptual function, becoming active also during the observation of other individuals that perform similar actions and movements.
Subsequent discoveries have also shown that the motor field is not exclusive, but that such a mechanism would also cover the emotional and sensory fields, with a number of consequences to fall in many areas of science and beyond.
Professor Gallese– Professor of Physiology at the Department of Neurosciences of the School of Medicine of the University of Parma, Coordinator of the PhD in Neuroscience and Director of the Graduate School of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine of the same University and since 2010 also Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Dept. of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University in New York – is particularly active in multidisciplinary research investigating the possible applications of mirror neurons and in the dissemination of this fundamental discovery. This is also due to his humanistic skills and his natural vocation to knowledge sharing...... (click here to read more)