Angelo Mosso 19th century Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 physiologist, who created the first crude neuroimaging

Neuroimaging

Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function/pharmacology of the brain...

 technique by recording the pulsation of the human cortex in patients with skull defects following neurosurgical procedures. From his findings that these pulsations change during mental activity, he inferred that during mental activities blood flow increases to the brain. Though crude, this inference is the basis for the more refined neuroimaging techniques of FMRI

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI is a type of specialized MRI scan used to measure the hemodynamic response related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. It is one of the most recently developed forms of neuroimaging...

, and PET, essential to neuroscience research today.

He was born in Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

, studied medicine there and in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, and Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and was appointed professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of pharmacology

Pharmacology

Pharmacology is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function...

 (1876) and professor of physiology

Physiology

Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

 (1879) at Turin. He invented various instruments to measure the pulse

Pulse

In medicine, one's pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the heartbeat by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed against a bone, such as at the neck , at the wrist , behind the knee , on the inside of the elbow , and near the...

 and experimented and wrote upon the variation in the volume of the pulse during sleep

Sleep

Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than...

, mental activity, or emotion. In 1900-01 he visited the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and embodied the results of his observations in Democrazia nella religione e nella scienza: studi sull' America (1901). In 1882 he founded with Emery the Archives Italiennes de Biologie, in which journal most of his essays appeared. Among his other works are:

• Die Diagnostik des Pulses (1879)
• Sulla paura (1884)
• La paura (1891; English translation by E. Lough and F. Kiesow, Fear, London, 1896)
• La fatica (1891; English translation by M. A. and W. B. Drummond, Fatigue, New York, 1904)
• La Temperatura del cervello (1894)
• Fisiologia dell' uomo sulle Alpi (1897; third edition, 1909)
• Mens Sana in Corpore Sano (1903)
• Vita moderna degli Italiani (1905)
• Escursioni nel mediterraneo e gli scavi di Creta (1907; second edition, 1910; English translation, The Palaces of Crete
  Crete
  Crete is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, and one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It forms a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece while retaining its own local cultural traits...
  
   and their Builders, New York, 1908)
• La preistoria: original della civilta mediterranea (1910; English translation by M. C. Harrison, The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, New York, 1911)
• Nuovo Antologia (in collaboration)

Mosso was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

 in 1897.

Inventions

• Mosso's ergograph — (1890) An apparatus for recording the force and frequency of flexion of the fingers
• Mosso's sphygmomanometer — An instrument for measuring blood pressure in the arteries

The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary (1938)

External links

• Biography in Italian
• Short biography and bibliography in the Virtual Laboratory
  Virtual Laboratory
  The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life...
  
   of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from...
  
  
• Some places and memories related to Angelo Mosso on Himetop - The History of Medicine Topographical Database