Luciano Fadiga

Who is Luciano Fadiga?

Luciano Fadiga is a neurophysiologist at the Human Physiology department of the University of Ferrara, Italy.

Born in 1961. M.D., University of Bologna, Ph.D. in Neuroscience, University of Parma. Senior Researcher at the University of Parma since 1992. He is actually Professor of Human Physiology at the University of Ferrara and Senior Scientist at the Italian Institute of Technology. He has a long experience in electrophysiology and neurophysiology in monkeys and humans.

Among his contributions:

⁕The description of the functional properties of the monkey ventral premotor cortex. During this time Fadiga, together with his Parma colleagues, discovered mirror neurons, a class of neurons that respond both when the monkey performs actions and when it observes similar actions made by other individuals. Fadiga has suggested that these neurons unify perception and action and may contribute to others’ action understanding.

⁕The first demonstration that a mirror system exists also in humans. He achieved this result by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation on the hand motor cortex of human subjects while they were observing others' actions. He demonstrated that the amplitude of observer’s hand muscle potentials, as evoked by TMS, was specifically and significantly modulated by the observed actions.