Acknowledgments

We were most fortunate to have had the creative editorial assistance of Howard P. Beckman, who passed away earlier this year after having finished his work on this edition. Following graduation from San Francisco State University with a BA in 1968, Howard began his distinguished career as a scientific editor. In 1997, he received a law degree from John F. Kennedy University and began a parallel career in environmental law. Howard has been an integral part of Principles of Neural Science since the third edition. Although he was not trained as a scientist, his logical thinking and rigorous intellect helped ensure that the book had a unified style of exposition. Howard’s demand for clarity of writing has had an immeasurable impact on each edition of this book, and he will be greatly missed by all who worked with him over the years.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Pauline Henick, who skillfully managed the editorial project with great care, keen intelligence, and the utmost diligence. Pauline somehow managed with good humor and understanding to keep all of the editors and authors of the book on track with their chapters through some very difficult circumstances. The timely publishing of the book would not have been possible without her stellar contributions.

We also wish to thank Jan Troutt of Troutt Visual Services for her superb technical and artistic contributions to the illustrations. We appreciate the artistic expertise and keen eye of Mariah Widman, who helped with the preparation of the figures.

We are indebted to our colleagues at McGraw Hill—Michael Weitz, Kim Davis, Jeffrey Herzich, and Becky Hainz-Baxter—for their invaluable help in the production of this edition. Anupriya Tyagi, Cenveo Publisher Services, did an outstanding job of overseeing the composition of the book, for which we are most grateful.

Many other colleagues have helped the editors by critically reading selected chapters of the book and have helped the authors with assistance in the research and writing of the chapters. We wish to acknowledge the contributions of Katherine W. Eyring to Chapter 15; Jeffrey L. Noebels, MD, PhD, to Chapter 58; and Gabriel Vazquez Velez, PhD, Maxime William C. Rousseaux, PhD, and Vicky Brandt to Chapter 63.

We also wish to acknowledge the important role of authors of chapters in previous editions of Principles of Neural Science, whose past contributions continue to be reflected in a number of chapters in the present edition. These legacy authors include Cori Bargmann, Uta Frith, James Gordon, A.J. Hudspeth, Conrad Gilliam, James E. Goldman, Thomas M. Jessell (deceased), Jane M. Macpherson, James H. Schwartz (deceased), Thomas Thach (deceased), and Stephen Warren.

We are especially indebted to the editors of the different sections (parts) of the book—Thomas D. Albright, Randy M. Bruno, Thomas M. Jessell (deceased), C. Daniel Salzman, Joshua R. Sanes, Michael N. Shadlen, Daniel M. Wolpert, and Huda Y. Zoghbi—who played a critical role in planning the overall organization of their sections and working with the authors to shape their chapters. 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.