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Rita Levi-Montalcini

Neurologist Italian born in 1909

The secret?

Staying curious, committed and have passion.

Price Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize 1983 Albert Lasker Award
for Basic Medical Research 1986
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986

FOR YOUR HUNDRED YEARS
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MRS

(Interview)

How does your brain? •
- Just like in my 20 years. I
no difference in my desire nor my abilities.
Tomorrow I will be attending a medical conference.

But is there not some genetic limit? •
- Non.Mon brain will soon be a century ... but he does not know senility. My body
ride is inevitable, but not the brain

Why is that? •
- We have a large neuronal plasticity: even if the neurons are dying, those who remain
reorganize themselves in order to maintain the same functions,
but it is still necessary to stimulate them.

Help me do it. •
- Hold desires, activate your brain, run it, so it does
never degenerate.

And I will live longer?
• - You will live more years than you have to live, and that is what is interesting. The secret
: Stay curious, committed and have passion

Yours was scientific research. •
- Yes, and I still as passionate.

You have discovered how to grow and renew the cells of the nervous system.
• Yes, in 1942. I called this discovery
le''Nerve Growth Factor'' NGF (nerve growth factor)
For almost half a century, I was forbidden until recognition the validity of my discovery.
I received for this discovery, the Nobel Prize in 1986.


Is there a difference between the brain of a man and a woman? •
- Only in brain function that are related to emotions related to the endocrine system.
But as for the cognitive functions, there is no difference.

Why are there still very few women scientists? •
- No, this is not true!
Many scientific discoveries were attributed to men in truth the work of their sisters, wives or daughters.

Really? •
- It did not admit female intelligence, she was left in the shadows.
Fortunately today there are more women than men in scientific research: The heirs of Hypatia.

The fourth-century sage Alexandrine
... • - Now we will finish more murdered in the streets by the Christian monks misogyny, as it was.
Certainly something has gone worldwide.

Nobody tried to assassinate you? ...
• - During Fascism, Mussolini tried to imitate Hitler's Jewish persecution ... I had to hide
time. But I never stopped my research:
I started my lab in my bedroom ...
And they do then that I discovered apoptosis, that is to say programmed cell death.

How do you explain the Nazi madness? •
- Hitler and Mussolini were able to speak to crowds,
the emotional brain is still predominant in the brain neocortex, the intellectual.
They manipulated the emotions, not reason.

Ideology is emotion, it is without reason. •
- The reason is the daughter of imperfection
In invertebrates everything is programmed: they are perfect. We, no!
Being imperfect, we resort to reason, ethical values:
discern right from wrong is the highest level of Darwinian evolution!