British roots of Italian neurophysiology in the early 20th century

SummaryThe recent Congress of the Italian Society of Neuroscience in Verona attracted several hundred participants, attesting to the vitality of a scientific enterprise that was started 23 years ago with the Society's first meeting in Rome. During the first Congress in Rome, four eminent Italian scientists were appointed honorary members of the Society in recognition of their outstanding contributions to neuroscience: the neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini, the neuropharmacologists Daniele Bovet and Vittorio Erspamer, and the neurophysiologist Giuseppe Moruzzi. Their world-famous work inspired and provided the climate that encouraged the development of the neurosciences in Italy, and inspires Italian neuroscientists to this day. I have benefited from Moruzzi's teaching throughout my scientific career, and my purpose here is to tell how Moruzzi's teacher Mario Camis, and Moruzzi himself, benefited in turn from the teachings of the British founders of modern neurophysiology, Charles Scott Sherrington and Edgar Douglas Adrian.