Mario Marchi has a scientific experience of more than 30 years in the study of several aspects of central neurotransmission. Professor at the School of Pharmacy, University of Genova, Italy, Mario Marchi is a neuropharmacologist who worked during the past decades in the field of cholinergic mechanisms. He started working on the development and aging of cholinergic and adrenergic synapses in the central and peripheral nervous system since the late 70’s as a visiting scientist at the Department of Biobehavioral Sciences of the University of Connecticut. In the early 80’s, pioneer in the studies on presynaptic receptors modulating neurotransmitter release, his group was the first to discover and characterize, in rats and also in humans, the presynaptic muscarinic M2 autoreceptors which control acetylcholine release in the central nervous system and to report the existence of multiple presynaptic muscarinic receptors which are functionally and pharmacologically distict. In a series of papers Marchi’s research group examined also the role of several nicotinic receptor subtypes, present on different nerve terminals, demonstrating the functional coexistence of these receptors with other presynaptic receptors and discovering a new functional role for nicotine in the brain. Another important contribution of his research group concerns the field of neuronal plasticity with their studies on the functional changes of the pre- and post-synaptic receptors after chronic drug treatments or due to an “enriched environment”.