"THE MIRROR MECHANISM" : The First Antonio Meucci Lectures

The series Antonio Meucci Honorary Lectures, organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, under the Patronage of The Embassy of Italy to the US, will start with a lecture on “the Mirror Mechanism” by Italian neurophysiologist and Senior Scientist Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti.Prof. Rizzolatti, Director of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Parma, will lecture on his paradigm-shattering discovery, in the early 1990s, of the mirror-neuron system in humans which explains the human capacity to learn by imitation.With an introduction by Prof. Emilio Bizzi (MIT), former president of The American Academy of Arts and Science.Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti is an Italian neurophysiologist and Senior Scientist of the research team that discovered mirror neurons in the frontal and parietal cortex of the macaque monkey. His discovery has been hailed by many neuroscientists as a “Copernican revolution” in the field of brain research.The Antonio Meucci Lectures are dedicated and inspired by Antonio Meucci, to assert the often unrecognized pre-eminence of Italian research in the world and its contribution to industrial and economic growth.