Vincenzo Malacarne (1744-1816) and the First Description of the Human Cerebellum

The Cerebellum
Alberto ZanattaFabio Zampieri

Abstract

Vincenzo Malacarne, professor of medicine, surgery, and obstetrics in Turin, Pavia, and Padua, Italy, represented a perfect example of an eighteenth century "letterato", combining interests in humanities, sciences, and politics, embodying the ideal of an encyclopedic and universal culture. He made important contributions in anatomy and surgery, teratology, obstetrics, neurology, and history of medicine, adopting a interdisciplinary approach based on the correlation between anatomy, surgery, and clinics. He deserves a special place in the history of neurology because of the first complete description of the human cerebellum. He quantified the units of the cerebellar internal structures, the lamellae being numbered for a systematic description of the human cerebellum. He thought the mental faculties depended on their number, considering a relation between the number of cerebellar lamellae and the expression of intellectual faculties. In this way, he made first statistics on human faculties. He advanced the concept that the number of cerebellar folia was influenced by the environment, thus providing the first nature-nurture hypothesis made on the basis of observations, and the concept of neuroplasticity in the scientific literatur...Continue Reading

References

May 13, 1998·Brain : a Journal of Neurology·J D Schmahmann, J C Sherman
Jan 30, 2015·The Cerebellum·Piergiorgio Strata
Sep 4, 2015·Cerebellum & Ataxias·Mario Manto, Peter Mariën
Aug 11, 2016·History of Psychiatry·Alberto ZanattaFabio Zampieri

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Citations

Apr 3, 2019·Annual Review of Neuroscience·Jeremy D SchmahmannMark A Halko
Apr 27, 2021·Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience·Greta AmoreAntonio Gennaro Nicotera
Jul 23, 2021·Neuropsychology Review·Bruce Crosson
Aug 18, 2021·The Cerebellum·Gustavo V PonceDennis J L G Schutter

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