Giuseppe Moruzzi
| Giuseppe Moruzzi | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 30, 1910 Campagnola Emilia, Italy |
| Died | March 11, 1986 (aged 75) Pisa, Italy |
| Fields | Neurophysiology |
| Institutions | University of Pisa |
| Known for | Discovery of the reticular activating system |
Giuseppe Moruzzi (July 30, 1910 – March 11, 1986) was an Italian neurophysiologist. He was one of three scientists who connected wakefulness to a series of brain structures known as the reticular activating system, and his work reframed sleep as an active process in the brain rather than a passive one. He received the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society and the Feltrinelli Prize from the Accademia dei Lincei.
Born in Campagnola Emilia, Moruzzi grew up in Parma. He came from a line of physicians; his father was a general practitioner, his great-grandfather was a pathology professor, and his uncle was a colleague of Jean-Martin Charcot. Moruzzi studied at the University of Parma under neuroanatomist Antonio Pensa, who had been trained by Camillo Golgi. Pensa left to work in Pavia, but Moruzzi stayed behind, in part because he could not afford to move away from home but also because his interests had shifted from neuroanatomy to neurophysiology. Mario Camis mentored Moruzzi, and Moruzzi followed him to Bologna in 1936.
Beginning in 1937, Moruzzi studied under Frederic Bremer at the Neurophysiologic Institute at the University of Brussels. He then worked at the Neurophysiological Institute of Cambridge under Edgar Adrian, where the pair became known for recording discharges from single motor neurons in the pyramidal tracts. In the years following World War II, many European scientists relocated to the United States. Moruzzi came to Northwestern University to work with a brain scientist named Steven Ranson. Once at Northwestern, Moruzzi met Horace Winchell Magoun and Donald B. Lindsley, and they worked to elucidate the neural processes responsible for wakefulness.
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