Close this book for a moment and look around you. You scan the scene by directing your attention, and gaze, at certain specific objects. Despite the background, you discern them. The process is partially intentional and partially preattentive. How all this can be done is described in the fourth volume of Models of Neural Networks devoted to Early Vision and Atten­ tion that you are holding in your hands. Early vision comprises the first stages of visual information processing. It is as such a scientific challenge whose clarification calls for a penetrating review. Here you see the result. The Heraeus Foundation (Hanau) is to be thanked for its support during the initial phase of this project. John Hertz, who has extensive experience in both computational and ex­ perimental neuroscience, provides in "Neurons, Networks, and Cognition" to neural modeling. John Van Opstal explains in a theoretical introduction "The Gaze Control System" how the eye's gaze control is performed and presents a novel theoretical description incorporating recent experimental results. We then turn to the relay stations thereafter, the lateral genicu­ late nucleus (LGN) and the primary visual cortex. Their anatomy, phys­ iology, functional relations, and ensuing response properties are carefully analyzed by Klaus Funke et al. in "Integrating Anatomy and Physiology of the Primary Visual Pathway: From LGN to Cortex", one of the most comprehensive reviews that is available at the moment.

1. Neurons, Networks, and Cognition: An Introduction to Neural Modeling (J.A. Hertz) 2. The Gaze Control System (John Van Opstal) 3. Integrating Anatomy and Physiology of the Primary Visual Pathway: from LGN to Cortex (K. Funke, Z.F. Kisvárday, M. Volgushev, and F. Wörgötter) 4. Neural Principles of Preattentive Scene Segmentation: Hints from Cortical Recordings, Related Models, and Perception (R. Eckhorn) 5. Figure-Ground Segregation and Brightness Perception at Illusory Contours: A Neuronal Model (E. Peterhans, R. van der Zwan, B. Heider, F. Heitger) 6. Controlling the Focus of Visual Selective Attention (E. Niebur, L. Itti, C. Koch) 7. Activity-Gating Attentional Networks (J. Eggert, J.L. van Hemmen) 8. Timing and Counting Precision in the Blowfly Visual System (R. de Ruyter van Steveninck, W. Bialek) 9. Paradigms for Computing with Spiking Neurons (W. Maass)