On November 6 and 7, 1993, a meeting of somatosensory and developmental biologists was held in Washington, D.C., to consider a number of recent findings that relate to the somatosensory system. The focus of this, the sixth annual Barrels Symposium (Barrels VI), was on somatosensory circuits and plasticity and on the development of barrellike cell and fiber aggregations in the brainstem, thalamus, and cerebral cortex. Dr. Thomas Woolsey began the meeting by reflecting on the life of Dr. Hendrik Van der Loos, who made pioneering contributions to our understanding of the nervous system and, in particular, the whisker-barrel neuraxis. To quote from Dr. Woolsey's reflections, “We named the barrels … linked them to the columns discovered by Dr. Vernon Mountcastle. And so it went.” Dr. Woolsey then expounded on Dr. Van der Loos's many contributions on pathway organization: “barreloids, development of cortex, organization of the periphery, classification of inhibitory cortical cells, connections from the barrelfi...