Book excerpt: Computational neuroscience is best defined by its focus on understanding the nervous systems as a computational device rather than by a particular experimental technique. Accordinlgy, while the majority of the papers in this book describe analysis and modeling efforts, other papers describe the results of new biological experiments explicitly placed in the context of computational issues. The distribution of subjects in Computation and Neural Systems reflects the current state of the field. In addition to the scientific results presented here, numerous papers also describe the ongoing technical developments that are critical for the continued growth of computational neuroscience. Computation and Neural Systems includes papers presented at the First Annual Computation and Neural Systems meeting held in San Francisco, CA, July 26--29, 1992.