Interview with Italian Neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini: “Progress depends on our brain. The most important part of our brain, that which is neocortical, must be used to help others and not just to make discoveries.”
In an interview on the Italian television program, Che Tempo Che Fa, Italian neurologist and Nobel Prize winner Rita Levi-Montalcini talks about the brain and the importance of helping others. What do these two topics have to do with one another? According to Rita Levi-Montalcini, we can control our actions and emotions by using a different part of our brain.
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Italian neurologist, Rita Levi-Montalcini, in an interview with Italian journalist and television anchor Fabio Fazio, states that “progress and research must continue; you cannot lock up the brain”. What would lead this prestigious representative of the international scientific community to talk about the brain and the need for altruism?
Rita Levi-Montalcini was born in 1909 in Turin, Italy. Although her father believed that women should not pursue careers, Rita graduated summa cum laude from the University of Turin Medical School in 1936, and then completed a degree for specialization in neurology and psychiatry in 1940. She received the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery with colleague Stanley Cohen of Nerve growth factor (NGF). Since 2001, she has also served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life.
Her intellectual curiosity is not limited to the study of scientific theory; she has also always been interested in changes in human society. Her research is not conducted simply out of scientific interest. She also has a strong belief and message for our future: it is fundamental for people, from a scientific point of view, to have an objective that includes helping out those who do not have the privilege of belonging to the scientifically and technologically elite.
Rita discovered that man is born gregarious, because he is guided by the part of the brain that is dominated by the limbic lobe, which is characterized by emotion. But what are the implications of this observation? Our actions, which come from the emotional part of our brain, can result in harmful consequences. Therefore, behaviors derive from primitive impulses. Her conclusion is that we can use our neocortex to offset these behaviors. In other words, our future can be changed. We must strive for the control and usage of the neocortex instead of the limbic system, in order to control our actions and behaviors.
Our future can be found in our brain.
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Tags: Brain, discoveries, help others, Interview, Italian, Italian neurologist, Italian neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, Lev-Montalcini, neocortical, neurologist, progress, Rita Levi-Montalcini
