John Raymond Smythies (30 November 1922 – 28 January 2019) was a British neuropsychiatrist, neuroscientist and neurophilosopher.
as ship's doctor on HMS Porlock Bay based in Bermuda, he completed his basic medical postgraduate training at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, before selecting neuropsychiatry for a speciality.
Two weeks into his first psychiatric residency at St. George's Hospital, London (20), noting the close chemical relation between the psychotomimetic drug mescaline and the neurotransmitter catecholamines, he suggested that schizophrenia might be caused by some abnormality in catecholamine metabolism that produced a mescaline-like substance in the brain.
In collaboration with the organic chemist John Harley-Mason and Humphry Osmond, his psychiatric colleague at St. George's, he developed this idea, into the first specific biochemical theory of schizophrenia—the transmethylation hypothesis (5).
Inspired by the fact that mescaline produces such remarkable effects on all human mental faculties and by the interdisciplinary work of Albert Schweitzer, in the same year Smythies decided to tackle the mind-brain problem in a systematic way i.e. by undertaking a rigorous training in neuroscience, experimental psychology and philosophy.
He first worked for one year as a resident in the EEG Department at the National Hospital, Queen Square, London (21).
degree in neuroanatomy, philosophy and cultural anthropology with the neuroanatomist William C. Gibson at the University of British Columbia (22).
The neuroanatomical research involved was a study of the synaptic structure in human cortex as revealed by silver staining and was awarded a post-graduate M.D degree by Cambridge (23).
His teacher in philosophy was the distinguished American philosopher Avrum Stroll, who became a lifelong mentor and friend.
This was followed during the tenure of a Nuffield Fellowship by six months with the Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles in neurophysiology and 18 months at the Psychological Laboratory in Cambridge with Oliver Zangwill studying the stroboscopic patterns (the complex geometrical hallucinations induced by looking at a flickering light).
[3] Then Smythies worked a further two years in neuropharmacology with Harold E. Himwich in Galesburg, Illinois and with Hudson Hoagland at the Worcester Foundation, before returning to London where he completed his formal clinical psychiatric training with Sir Aubrey Lewis at the Maudsley Hospital (25).
He then joined the Faculty of the University of Edinburgh for twelve years, first as senior lecturer then reader (26), before being invited to a personal chair at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, funded by the Ireland family, where he stayed for eighteen years (27).
In 1956 Smythies published his first book "Analysis of Perception" (28) on the mind-brain problem in which he presented a new theory — extended materialism — based on an analysis of fundamental flaws in the current orthodox theory (mind-brain identity) and previous work by Joseph Priestley, C.D.
Robert Almader's (29) described the work as "This is certainly one of the four or five most arresting and compelling books written on the nature of consciousness, the mind-brain problem, and human personality."
In 2008, the distinguished British physicist Bernard Carr (30), following a different line of research, presented a very similar theory as the basis for a necessary new paradigm shift in cosmology.
He made extensive contributions to knowledge in a number of fields including the neurochemistry of schizophrenia (5,6) and the neuropharmacology of psychedelic drugs (7); the functional neuroanatomy of synapses with particular regard to the role of synaptic plasticity, endocytosis and redox factors (8,9); the role in the brain of orthoquinone metabolites of catecholamines (10); the role of virtual reality mechanisms in visual perception (11) and, in particular, theories of brain-consciousness relations (12–17).
Smythies held positions as the Charles Byron Ireland Professor Emeritus of Psychiatric Research at the University of Alabama Medical Center at Birmingham, visiting scholar at the Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, and senior research fellow at the Institute of Neurology, University College London.
Aldous Huxley, in his work The Doors of Perception, which details the effects of mescaline, credits Smythies with having inspired him to take the subject.
For the last two decades of his life, Smythies worked with Professor Ramachandran's Center for Brain and Cognition at UCSD, latterly on the function of the claustrum as well as the epigenetics of neurocomputation, exosomes and telocytes (37–54).
Smythies J. R. "Hallucinogenic Drugs", Chapter 18 in Modern Trends in Neurology, Dennis Williams, editor.
Smythies J. R. The role of free radicals in the brain in health and disease in relation to synaptic plasticity.
Brain and Mind, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, editor and contributor of essay "The representative theory of perception", 1965.
Smythies, J., Edelstein, L., Ramachandran, V. The Claustrum: Structural, Functional and Clinical Neuroscience.
41 Smythies J, Edelstein L. (2013) Transsynaptic modality codes in the brain: possible involvement of synchronized spike timing, microRNAs, exosomes and epigenetic processes.
Smythies J, Edelstein L. (2013) Telocytes, exosomes, gap junctions and the cytoskeleton: the makings of a primitive nervous system?
Hypotheses relating to the function of the claustrum II: instructional oscillations and dendritic integration.
Smythies J, Edelstein L. (2013) Hypotheses concerning how Otx2 makes its incredible journey: a hitchhiker on the road to Rome.
Smythies J, Edelstein L. (2014) The desferrioxamine-prochlorperazine coma—clue to the role of dopamine-iron recycling in the synthesis of hydrogen peroxide in the brain.
Smythies J, Edelstein L, Ramachandran V. (2014) Molecular mechanisms for the inheritance of acquired characteristics-exosomes, microRNA shuttling, fear and stress: Lamarck resurrected?
in Edelstein L, Smythies J, Noble D. (Editors) Epigenetic information-processing mechanisms in the brain.