This is a photo of Ray when he gave a talk at the New Orleans meetings [Society for Neuroscience] years later, and he actually dressed up as a Siamese cat – here’s his magic wand to point out features on the screen. And it raised the whole issue – why are projections abnormal – what does it have to do with pigment, and what are the cues that fibers use to decide to go to the right or the left when you get to the optic chiasm.

Carol Mason, one of his students, is the one who is following that up even now and there is so much acquired knowledge about the guidance factors being used that came out of these initial studies. I could work with him because I could do physiology and he did anatomy and we used microelectrodes to map the abnormal representations in the lateral geniculate and cortex. Vivien worked mainly on behavior on the Siamese cats, and showed that they do have big visual deficits, and in a way predictable from the anatomy and physiology.            Next Page