 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).On 2 December 1950 Smythies married Vanna Gattorno of Trieste, Italy.John and Vanna published their joint autobiography "Two Coins in the Fountain" in 2006 (34).