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Emilio Bizzi

Emilio Bizzi
Photo courtesy of Kent Dayton
  • phone: 617-253-5769
  • fax: 617-258-5342
  • MIT address: 46-6189A
  • email: ebizzi@mit.edu
Meet Emilio Bizzi

 

Controlling actions
The fundamental job of the brain is to produce actions. Emilio Bizzi examines how the brain translates our general intentions into the detailed commands needed to control muscle movements. One of his key discoveries is that groups of muscles are activated synergistically by circuits of neurons in the spinal cord. He believes that these synergies represent the fundamental building blocks for assembling a repertoire of complex movements.
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Biography
Emilio Bizzi is an MIT Institute Professor, an Investigator in the McGovern Institute, and the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Brain Sciences and Human Behavior. He earned an M.D. from the University of Rome in 1958 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pisa in 1968. Dr. Bizzi joined the MIT faculty in 1968 and served as director of the Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology from 1983 to 1989. Dr. Bizzi chaired the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences from 1986 to 1997. He was appointed Investigator at the McGovern Institute in 2001. Among many other honors, Dr. Bizzi became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1968 and the Institute of Medicine in 2005. He received the President of Italy's Gold Medal for Scientific Contributions in 2005 and in 2006 was elected as President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.