GUTH 239elucidated by neurophysiological studies which showed: (a) that this
pathway provided the feedback mechanism that is essential for the
regulation of audition; and (b) that such feedback regulates activity in
most neural circuits. Two now eminent scientists who received their early
postdoctoral scientific experience in Rasmussen’s section are D. Kent
Morest, professor of neuroscience and director of the High Technology
Center for Neuroscience at the University of Connecticut Health Center,
and Thomas Reese, chief of the NINDB’s Laboratory of Neurobiology’s
Section on Structural Biology.
Scientific Environment of the Laboratory of Neuroanatomical Sciences
Standards of Propriety
Early in my career, in 1955, Windle called me to his office to tell me that
the editors of Physiological Review had invited him to write a review on
regeneration in the central and peripheral nervous systems. He said that
they were agreeable to his suggestion that so vast and unwieldy a subject
would benefit by being published as two consecutive articles, one on CNS
regeneration and the other on PNS regeneration. He said that he would
write the review on CNS regeneration, and he invited me to be co-author
with him on the PNS regeneration review article.^12 I was delighted by the
opportunity and by the confidence he showed in me, especially since I
had been in his laboratory only one year and had not yet published any
papers. I spent the better part of the next six months working in the library
where I tracked down and abstracted all (some 434) articles written from
1929 through 1955, and I then prepared a draft of the manuscript for his
inspection. Knowing that Windle would have much to add to the
manuscript, I presented it to him with a title page indicating the authorship
as “Windle and Guth.” In my presence, he took up a red pencil and began
to correct the manuscript as he read it. I was spellbound at his quickness;
the pencil simply flew over the page, as if unguided by human hand,
marking up every sentence without any hesitation whatever. After about
ten minutes he stopped and said that he would finish his task that evening.
The following day he returned to me a manuscript in which each page
was filled with corrections and annotations–every correction was just
and every annotation was correct. And on the title page, the name of
William F. Windle was struck through, leaving that of Lloyd Guth as