Acknowledgments

We were fortunate to have had the creative editorial assistance of Howard Beckman once again, who worked on the ongoing revisions of the fifth edition of Principles of Neural Science with the same characteristic demand for clarity of style and logic of argument that he has brought to previous editions. Without his assistance this edition would be a pale reflection of its previous editions.

Working on the other side of Manhattan at The Rockefeller University, away from the other editors at Columbia, Jim Hudspeth was responsible for the sections on Perception and Movement. In this lonely task Amy Miller, who cheerfully and accurately corrected the preliminary drafts of the relevant chapters, assisted him.

We owe a special debt to Sarah Mack who once again reinvented the entire art program. With her remarkable insight into science and detail, she produced remarkably clear, didactic, and artistically pleasing diagrams and images. We would like to thank our colleague Jane Dodd as well as Charles Lam, Becky Oles, and Terri Hamer for their help with the art program, and particularly Ann Canapary for her artistic contribution to the illustrations. We appreciate the generous help that Neil McMillan, Jackie Stewart, and Mariah Widman provided with the figures.

A great debt is also owed to Clayton Eccard who managed the editorial project with intelligence and diligence, allowing us to bring the book to fruition.

We thank Millie Pellan, Kathy MacArthur, and especially Maria Palileo at Columbia University, who typed the many versions of the manuscript through the various editorial stages.

We are indebted to our colleagues at McGraw-Hill, Harriet Lebowitz, Eve Siegel, and Ann Sydor, for their invaluable help in the production of this edition and grateful for the assistance of Rajni Pisharody in the composition of the book.

Many other colleagues have helped the editors by critically reading many chapters of the book. We are especially indebted to John Krakauer and John Koester for their efforts, which proved to be invaluable. Most importantly we owe the greatest debt to the contributing authors of this edition.

We finally thank our spouses and families for their support and forbearance during the editorial process.