Bücher der Reihe Studies of Brain Function

Considering the problem of motor control, he pointed out that the main objective of motor coordination is to overcome the redundant number of degrees of freedom of the motor apparatus or, in other words, to diminish the number of independent variables which control the movement (Bernstein 1967).

But there are also conceptual difficulties hindering the transition from "single-neurone" schemes, in which neurones are assigned relatively specific tasks (such as feature detection), to more complex schemes of nerve cell as semblies (for a discussion of some of the difficulties see Abeles 1982;

However, careful studies show that the salamander brain possesses virtually all the ana tomical and functional properties found in anurans, which are usually regarded as being much more evolved with respect to the guidance of comparable behavior.

This question is especially pertinent if we are thinking of information representation in the brain, since neuroscientists (or at least the vast majority of them) believe that the basic way in whieh patterns of information are encoded in the brain is as combinations of connections, selected in a variety of ways.

This need for intimate experience with the nervous system before daring to put forward some hypothesis about its mechanism of action is especially apparent when theorizing about cerebral cortex function.

The invitation to contribute a volume to the series Studies in Brain Func tion offers me a welcome opportunity for a comprehensive presentation of my research on the eye movements of the rabbit, and for a review of the older results in the perspectives offered by the progress of my own work, but even more of the field in general.

Artefacts of various sorts were invoked to explain the opponent's error, ranging from perceptual effects (Mach bands crispening the areal borders) to poor fixation supposedly due to perfusion too soon (!) after death.

This booklet, together with the following two,-which are well under way and will succeed it at intervals of, we hope, no more than six months, sets the stage for a new editorial enterprise in the field of brain science.

An invitation from the Editors to contribute to 'Studies of Brain Functions' with a monograph on the parietal lobe of fers me an opportunity to present in a concentrated form my studies on this part of the brain from a period of some what over a decade.

An attempt will be made to better understand the basic mechanisms of color vision using a more comprehensive approach which takes into account new mechanisms found in single cells and relates them to those found valid for the entire visual system.

In addition to both published and unpublished results of the group in Kaiserslautern (Bassler, Cruse, Ebner, Graham, Pfluger, Storrer, as well as doctoral and masters students), I have drawn upon the literature which had ap peared as of summer 1981.

The invitation by the editors of the series "studies of brain function" to contribute a monograph on the visual cortex gives me the opportunity to present in a concentrated manner much of the work I have done on the visual cortical areas of cat and monkey.

Yet sleep research may not be the same after the appearance of this book be cause it gives us a comprehensive mathematical theory which opens our eyes to new insights into the mechanism of the rhythm generation that under lies the "wake-sleep" cycle.

The original intent of the series Studies of Brain Function was to offer a forum to neurobiologists working in different fields to present some of their recent results in a more extensive way.

Consequently, the book can be read from various points of view: that of requiring an overview of theories and theoretical principles, or an overview of experimental studies in neural interaction and the methods that can be used, or with the conviction that theory and experiment cannot be separat ed.