Italian neuropsychology in the second half of the twentieth century. 2015

Giuseppe Vallar, and François Boller, and Dario Grossi, and Guido Gainotti
Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Building U6, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milan, Italy, giuseppe.vallar@unimib.it.

Since the early 1960s, human neuropsychology, the study of brain-behavior interrelations, mainly based on the analysis of their pathological variations, brought about by brain damage, has had a remarkable systematical development in Italy. All this started in Milan, with the neurologist Ennio de Renzi, and his collaborators (Luigi Vignolo, then Anna Basso, Pietro Faglioni, Hans Spinnler, François Boller, and, more autonomously, Edoardo Bisiach), in the Clinic of Nervous and Mental Diseases. Scientists of the "Milan group" investigated several neuropsychological deficits caused by focal hemispheric lesions in large series of left- and right-brain-damaged patients, and control participants, comparable for cultural and demographic variables. Standardized tests and advanced statistical methods were used, which also applied to the diagnosis and rehabilitation of aphasia. Subsequently, neuropsychology developed in Italy extensively, reaching high international reputation. Leading neuropsychologists have been the neurologists Guido Gainotti (Rome), and Franco Denes (Padua), the physicians and psychologists Luigi Pizzamiglio (Rome), and Carlo Umiltà (Parma, with fruitful interactions with the neurophysiologists Giovanni Berlucchi, Giacomo Rizzolatti, and Carlo Marzi, from the school of Giuseppe Moruzzi in Pisa) A second scientific generation of neuropsychologists has then developed in the 1970s, trained by the abovementioned scientists, further boosting and spreading high-level basic and applied research (diagnosis and rehabilitation of neuropsychological deficits of patients with brain damage or dysfunction throughout the life span, from childhood to the elderly). Available techniques include structural and functional imaging (CT, PET, SPET, MRI and fMRI Scans, DTI), electrophysiological recording (EEG, ERPs), non-invasive brain stimulation (TMS, tES), and their combined use.

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D007558 Italy A country in southern Europe, a peninsula extending into the central Mediterranean Sea, northeast of Tunisia. The capital is Rome. Sardinia
D009484 Neuropsychology A branch of psychology which investigates the correlation between experience or behavior and the basic neurophysiological processes. The term neuropsychology stresses the dominant role of the nervous system. It is a more narrowly defined field than physiological psychology or psychophysiology. Neuropsychologies
D001921 Brain The part of CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM that is contained within the skull (CRANIUM). Arising from the NEURAL TUBE, the embryonic brain is comprised of three major parts including PROSENCEPHALON (the forebrain); MESENCEPHALON (the midbrain); and RHOMBENCEPHALON (the hindbrain). The developed brain consists of CEREBRUM; CEREBELLUM; and other structures in the BRAIN STEM. Encephalon
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D049673 History, 20th Century Time period from 1901 through 2000 of the common era. 20th Century History,20th Cent. History (Medicine),20th Cent. History of Medicine,20th Cent. Medicine,Historical Events, 20th Century,History of Medicine, 20th Cent.,History, Twentieth Century,Medical History, 20th Cent.,Medicine, 20th Cent.,20th Cent. Histories (Medicine),20th Century Histories,Cent. Histories, 20th (Medicine),Cent. History, 20th (Medicine),Century Histories, 20th,Century Histories, Twentieth,Century History, 20th,Century History, Twentieth,Histories, 20th Cent. (Medicine),Histories, 20th Century,Histories, Twentieth Century,History, 20th Cent. (Medicine),Twentieth Century Histories,Twentieth Century History

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