Trained as a Child Neurologist at “La Sapienza ” Univ. in Roma, he provided a series of fundamental studies aimed at understanding the functional role of GABAergic signaling in the hippocampus at early developmental stages in both physiological and pathological conditions . In 1971, he was in Marseille to work in the Service of H. Gastaut, a leading figure in Epilepsy. In 1976-78 as a Post Doc at UCLA, he characterized, using in vivo electrophysiological recordings, the functional connections of basal ganglia in kittens. In 1981 he joined RA North's lab at MIT. In 1984, he obtained the position of “Directeur de Recherche” at INSERM in Paris where, together with Y. Ben-Ari, discovered that GABA, the main inhibitory transmitter in the adult brain, early in postnatal life, exerts a depolarizing and excitatory action via an outwardly directed flux of chloride. The interplay between the depolarizing action of GABA and glutamate generate a primordial form of synchrony, the so-called Giant Depolarizing Potentials or GDPs crucial for synaptic wiring. In 1991, he came back to Italy as full Professor at SISSA (Trieste), from which he retired in 2013. During that period he collaborated with JP Changeux on the role of nAChR on silent synapses. In the last years, his studies have been focused on ASDs, working on several animal models: NL3R451C KI, NL3 KO and BTBR T+tf/J mice. After retiring he joined as Scientific Director the European Brain Research Institute in Rome.