Angelo Mosso (1846–1910)
Born 1846 CE, died 1910 CE.
Angelo Mosso (30 May 1846 – 24 November 1910) was a 19th-century Italian physiologist who invented the first neuroimaging technique, known as 'human circulation balance'. Mosso began his groundbreaking work by recording the pulsations of the human cortex in patients with skull defects following neurosurgical procedures. He observed that these pulsations changed during mental activity, leading him to infer that blood flow to the brain increases during such activities. To non-invasively measure the redistribution of blood during emotional and intellectual activity in healthy subjects, Mosso invented the 'human circulation balance'. This invention is regarded as the first neuroimaging technique ever and is a forerunner of more refined techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). Born in Turin, Mosso studied medicine in Turin, Florence, Leipzig, and Paris. He was appointed professor of pharmacology in 1876 and professor of physiology in 1879 at the University of Turin.
Text from the Wikipedia article Angelo_Mosso, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.