Any project of this magnitude depends on many people. The results presented in this book include work by a host of scientists working in a number of fields over the past hundred years. Throughout, I have tried my best to acknowledge and cite the papers in which these ideas first appeared. I am sure that I have missed some, and apologize here to my colleagues for any omissions.
This work would never have been possible without the amazing and wonderful students and postdocs who have come through my lab, particularly Adam Johnson, Steve Jensen, Matthijs van der Meer, and Zeb Kurth-Nelson, with whom I have worked directly on these ideas, as well as Neil Schmitzer-Torbert, Jadin Jackson, John Ferguson, Anoopum Gupta, Beth Masimore, Andy Papale, Nate Powell, Paul Regier, Adam Steiner, Jeff Stott, Brandy Schmidt, and Andrew Wikenheiser. I am also indebted to Kelsey Seeland and Chris Boldt, without whom my laboratory would not function as it does and I would not have had the freedom to write this book.
Many of the ideas presented here have been worked out in conversations with colleagues. And so I need to thank those colleagues for the invigorating discussions we have had at conferences and workshops over the years, including Peter Dayan, Read Montague, Larry Amsel, Nathaniel Daw, Yael Niv, Warren Bickel, Jon Grant, Bernard Balleine, Dave Stephens, John O’Doherty, Antonio Rangel, Cliff Kentros, Andre Fenton, and many others too numerous to mention. I want to take the time here to thank my friends and colleagues who read drafts of part or all of this book, particularly Jan Dubinsky, Matthijs van der Meer, and John Gessner, as well as my editor Joan Bossert.
Much of the work presented in this book has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, particularly by grants for the study of decision-making from NIMH and NIDA. My first foray into decision-making was funded by a Fellowship from the Sloan Foundation, and from a McKnight Land-Grant Fellowship from the University of Minnesota. Students were funded by training grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes for Health. This work would have been impossible without their generous support.
Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife Laura, my first reader, who read every chapter, before the first draft, after it, and then again, when the book was done, who has put up with the time and stress this book put on me, who inspires my poetry, and who doesn’t let me get away with anything less than the best I can do. This book, all the work I have done, is for her.