The organisation of the cerebral cortex edited by Francis O. Schmitt, Frederic G. Worden, George Adelman and Stephen G. Dennis, MIT Press, 1981. £31.00 (xxi + 592 pages) ISBN 0 262 19189 X

This book is based on the proceedings of a Neuroscience Research Program Colloquium held at Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1979. Although inevitably somewhat selective in its coverage it nevertheless gives a valuable survey of recent work on the organization of the cerebral cortex. In the preface, the editors state that their aim was to convey the highlights of the topic rather than deal exhaustively with particular cortical issues. The result has been a book which covers a wide area of subject matter but manages to maintain an admirable coherence. In part, this is achieved by grouping the chapters into sections, with each section having a short introduction setting the context for the following three or four review chapters. The first section covers Development and Plasticity in the Cortex, with contributions on development triumph