In the late 1960s, while I was working in Robert F. Schmidt's laboratory in the Department of Physiology of the University of Heidelberg, conducting experiments on cutaneous primary afferent neurons and presynaptic inhibition in the spinal cord, Robert introduced me to the sympathetic nervous system. We worked on somato-sympathetic reflexes and other spinal reflexes, some of the work being conducted with Akio Sato. At this time, I tried to understand The Wisdom of the Body by Walter Bradford Cannon (Cannon 1939) and Vegetatives Nervensystem by Walter Rudolf Hess (Hess 1948). However, from 1971 to 1974, I continued with my experimental work on the somatosensory system and concentrated with Alden Spencer on the cuneate nucleus and thalamus in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior of the Public Health Institute of the City of New York (directed by Eric Kandel).

While working in New York I came into contact with Chandler McCuskey Brooks (Downstate Medical Center, State University of New York). He invited me to attend the Centennial Symposium “The Life and Influence of Walter Bradford Cannon, 1871–1945: The Development of Physiology in this Century” (Brooks et al. 1975). Chandler encouraged me to concentrate scientifically on the autonomic nervous system; he remained very supportive until his death seventeen years later. This influence and particularly the books of Cannon and Hess led to my decision to leave the somatosensory field and redirect my research, after my return to Germany, to investigations of the sympathetic nervous system.