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Italian neuropsychology in the second half of the twentieth century

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An Erratum to this article was published on 05 March 2015

Abstract

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.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Building U6, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo 1, 20126, Milan, Italy

    Giuseppe Vallar

  2. IRCCS Italian Auxological Institute, Milan, Italy

    Giuseppe Vallar

  3. Department of Neurology, George Washington University Medical School, Washington DC, USA

    François Boller

  4. Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Caserta, Italy

    Dario Grossi

  5. Institute of Neurology, Catholic University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Guido Gainotti

  6. IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy

    Guido Gainotti

Authors
  1. Giuseppe Vallar
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  2. François Boller
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  3. Dario Grossi
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  4. Guido Gainotti
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Giuseppe Vallar.

Additional information

This article is dedicated to the memory of Professor Ennio De Renzi (1924–2014) who passed away on November 9th. De Renzi’s research and teaching have made him a leading authority in the field, recognized as such not only in Italy, but also throughout the world. He has had a strong and highly beneficial influence on the professional lives of the authors of this review. Furthermore, it can be said that he positively affected the professional life and thinking of most of the persons mentioned in this article. In the last few months, Ennio discussed with us in depth many of the topics considered in this article. We are grateful to him also for this last contribution to Neuropsychology.

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Vallar, G., Boller, F., Grossi, D. et al. Italian neuropsychology in the second half of the twentieth century. Neurol Sci 36, 361–370 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-014-2044-6

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