The conference dedicated to Camillo Golgi and the legacy of Italian neurobiology ended with extraordinary public success, characterised by a massive turnout of young researchers and students.
The event offered an opportunity to retrace the career of Italy's second Nobel Prize winner (1906), described by the speakers as a true figurehead of modern science. The revolutionary significance of his insights was recalled: from the “Black Reaction”, the staining technique that made it possible to visualise neurons for the first time, to the discovery of the Golgi apparatus, the cellular secretion system identified decades before electron microscopy could confirm its existence. Space was also given to studies on malaria, where Golgi was credited with identifying Plasmodium (a protozoan) and not a bacterium as the cause of the disease, paving the way for modern drug therapies.
The conference drew a direct link between discoveries made in the late nineteenth century and current events, highlighted by the work of Prof. Giacomo Rizzolatti, whose discovery of mirror neurons was described during the proceedings as “the most important neurological contribution of the last fifty years”. These neurons, which are fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of empathy, intentionality and emotion, represent the evolution of research that began with Golgi's first visualisations.
Randy Schekman (Linceo, University of California, Berkeley), Nobel Prize winner for Medicine, also participated in the initiative. With his presentation “The legacy of Golgi: Vesicle traffic in health and disease”, he made an essential contribution to this journey from Golgi's insights to the modern frontiers of cellular research.
On the sidelines of the event, critical reflections emerged on the current state of research: despite major advances in molecular genetics, which allow specific protein mutations to be associated with certain diseases, there is still a long way to go in understanding the actual mechanisms that transform a microscopic defect into a clinical disease. This is a warning to the scientific community not to lose sight of the complexity of brain function as a whole.
The conference confirmed the excellence of Italian neurology, celebrating a tradition that reaches the most advanced frontiers of global neurophysiology.