Four "Greats": Neurophysiology was housed in Theobald Smith Hall where Herbert Gasser, the former Director, worked in his lab at the end of the first floor. The rest of that floor was occupied by David Lloyd on one side and Lorente de Nó on the other. Keffer Hartline and Frank Brink housed their groups on the upper floors. For those who were running long experiments, Gasser had had a small cafeteria installed in the basement where good scientific talk could be had during an evening's supper break.
Below, left to right: David Lloyd, Keffer Hartline, Rafael Lorente de No. (Pictures kindly supplied by the Rockefeller Archive Center).
My lab studied:
Sensory inputs to motor cortex, and how they are trimmed and focussed by pyramidal recurrent inhibition [with Rudomin, Asanuma]
Spread of excitation in the motor cortex [with Enger]
Focusing of spinal motor outputs by spinal recurrent inhibition [with Wilson]
Controls on the release of the neuromuscular transmitter acetylcholine (ACh) [with Thies]
Pictures of coworkers are shown below (see Research interests)
We found that the transmitter supply of ACh for transmission is guarded from exhaustion by a mechanism in the actively releasing nerve endings. (ref 15 in Research Papers)
1957/8 Per Enger. Spread of excitation in motor cortex.
We noticed that activity from one area of motor cortex can be reinitiated in adjacent areas. (ref 10 in Research Papers)
Spinal recurrent inhibition.
We demonstrated focusing of motor output by active groups of spinal motoneurons that inhibit nearby less active ones by means of their active recurrent axon branches.
(ref 8 in Research Papers)
1957/9 Pablo Rudomin, Clifford Slayman. Various sensory inputs to the motor cortex, arising from the same parts of the body, converge on pyramidal tract cells that are near one another.
We found converging inputs from somatosensory peripheral receptive fields, and (probably coordinative) inhibitory interactions between them. (refs. 12, 13 in Research Papers)
1960/61 Hiroshi Asanuma. Active pyramidal tract tract cells inhibit less active cells
nearby by means of their active recurrent axon branches.
We demonstrated that inhibitory recurrent interactions between cells in cortex trim peripheral receptive fields of their neighbors; an inhibition that most likely is mediated by local cortical recurrent interactions. (refs. 19-21 in Research Papers)
