Evolution of ideas on the primary visual cortex, 1955–1978: A biased historical account

In the early spring of 1958 I drove over to Baltimore from Washington, D.C., and in a cafeteria at Johns Hopkins Hospital met Stephen Kuffler and Torsten Wiesel, for a discussion that was more momentous for Torsten’s and my future than either of us could have possibly imagined. I had been at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research for three years, in the Neuropsychiatry Section headed by David Rioch, working under the supervision of M.G.F. Fuortes. I began at Walter Reed by developing a tungsten microelectrode and a technique for using it to record from chronically implanted cats, and I had been comparing the firing of cells in the visual pathways of sleeping and waking animals. It was time for a change in my research tactics. In sleeping cats only diffuse light could reach the retina through the closed eyelids. Whether the cat was asleep or awake with eyes open, diffuse light failed to stimulate the cells in the striate cortex. In waking animals I had succeeded in activating many cells with moving spots on a screen, and had found that some cells were very selective in that they responded when a spot moved in one direction across the screen (e.g. from left to right) but not when it moved in the opposite direction (1) (Fig. 1). There were many cells that I could not influence at all. Obviously there was a gold mine in the visual cortex, but methods were needed that would permit the recording of single cells for many hours, and with the eyes immobilized, if the mine were ever to begin producing. I had planned to do a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins Medical School with Vernon Mountcastle, but the timing was awkward for him because he was remodeling his laboratories. One day Kuffler called and asked if I would like to work in his laboratory at the Wilmer Institute of Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital with Torsten Wiesel, until the remodeling was completed. That was expected to take about a year. I didn’t have to be persuaded; some rigorous training in vision was just what I needed, and though Kuffler himself was no longer working in vision the tradition had been maintained in his laboratory. Torsten and I had visited each other’s laboratories and it was clear that we had common interests and similar outlooks. Kuffler