Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience Dale Purves et al. From the Preface: The creation of this book has been a highly collaborative effort, one that unfolded over several years as we taught cognitive neuroscience courses to undergraduate and graduate students at Duke University. Initially, each chapter was drafted by the one among us with relatively more expertise in the relevant area. The chapters were then revised during a series of interactive iterations based on extensive comments, suggestions, and improvements from among the authorship. This process of vetting and revision was abetted by additional advice from many other expert colleagues named in the Acknowledgments. Especially important was the incorporation of changes based on frank feedback on the draft chapters from our students. Some topics led to debates among our group that mirrored controversies in the larger field. If the arguments and discussions we experienced come through in the text, so much the better. Our goal has been not simply to summarize the received wisdom in this rapidly evolving field, but rather to set the stage for future advances in cognitive neuroscience, many of which will be made by those currently studying in institutions all around the world. As important as it may be to elucidate the present status of cognitive neuroscience, it is at least as important to provide a strong sense of the direction the field might take in the future to achieve the still distant goal of understanding the brain and its higher-order operations.