From 1968 until his retirement in 1994, Valentino Braitenberg was director of the department Structure and Function of Natural Nerve-Nets at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen. His research was mainly based on the combination of neuroanatomy with brain theory, with the aim to understand mechanisms of brain functions. Main fields of research were the visual system of the fly, cerebellum and the physiology of movement, and structure and function of the cerebral cortex. Some of his topics on the cerebral cortex were: quantitative-anatomical studies on the cortex of the mouse and on the human cortical white matter, orientation specificity in the visual cortex of primates, connected also with psychophysical studies on humans, as well as a neurological theory of language.