Core Center

描述(由申请人提供)：核心中心的总体目标保持不变：聚集17名研究听力和沟通障碍不同方面的研究人员，提高他们个人努力和持续合作的效率和生产力，将研究动物基本听力机制的研究人员与研究人类听力障碍的研究人员整合在一起。这为创造性和发展中的合作取得成果提供了新的、有时甚至是独特的机会。参与这一应用的研究人员代表了广泛的听力科学，从昆虫听觉的解剖学和生理学，到听力受损人类复杂声音感知的心理声学。现有的项目包括蝙蝠和鸟类的声音定位，昆虫和蝙蝠的捕食者与捕食者的相互作用，鱼类和鸟类的毛细胞再生，鸟类毛细胞再生后听力和发声的恢复，人类语言过程的MIG成像，蝙蝠、鸟类、正常人类、听力受损和老年人类的时间分辨率的精确度，以及昆虫、鱼类、鸟类和人类的复杂声音知觉的个体发育。总而言之，这群听力科学的研究人员和主题可能是现存的最多样化的。P30机制的支持对于保持高度的互动完整性和生产力至关重要。 核心1 成像核心 导演：阿瑟·N·波普，博士 描述(由申请人提供)：成像核心旨在增强和拓宽核心成员使用马里兰大学最先进的成像设施的能力。核心不仅将利用生物超微结构实验室(LBU)现有的设施进行透射电子、扫描电子和共聚焦显微镜以及组织准备，而且还将利用一个具有非常高端的透射电子显微镜的新EM设施和一个新的双光子共聚焦显微镜设施。然而，尽管为我们的调查人员提供了出色的设施，但对各种成像设施的使用者提供的援助有限，而且没有常规提供培训或咨询。核心战略的核心是聘请一名博士级别的支持人员，他的主要责任将是通过引入新的成像技术和对现有技术的创新使用来加强核心教师实验室的研究工作。支持人员将由核心主任(Popper)和一个指导委员会监督，指导委员会由核心主任和我们调查人员使用的成像设施的主任组成。这一核心将为已经将成像作为其研究的主要组成部分的实验室提供先进的能力，并将鼓励和帮助其他不经常使用成像技术的用户成为更有效的用户。这最终将导致新的合作研究努力，否则是不可能的，甚至是想象不到的(例如，比较鱼类和鸟类的毛细胞个体发育)。由于涉及的用户的独特星座，该核心的一个特别创新的用途是将无脊椎动物的技术移植到脊椎动物身上，反之亦然。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goals of the Core Center remain as before to: bring together 17 investigators working on different aspects of hearing and communication disorders, increase the efficiency and productivity of their individual efforts and ongoing collaborations, integrate investigators studying basic hearing mechanisms in animals with investigators studying human hearing impairment. This provides new and sometimes unique opportunities for creative and developing collaborations to reach fruition. The investigators participating in this application represent a broad range of hearing science from anatomy and physiology of hearing in insects to the psychoacoustics of complex sound perception in hearing impaired humans. Existing projects include sound localization in bats and birds, prey-predator interactions in insects and bats, hair cell regeneration in fish and birds, recovery of hearing and vocalizations in birds following hair cell regeneration, MIG imaging of language processes in humans, precision of time resolution in bats, birds, normal, hearing impaired, and aged humans, and the ontogeny of complex acoustic perception in insects, fish, birds, and humans. Taken together, this group of investigators and topics in hearing science is probably the most diverse in existence. The support of the P30 mechanism is essential in keeping a high level of interactive integrity and productivity. Core 1 Imaging Core Director: Arthur N. Popper, Ph.D. Description (provided by applicant): The Imaging Core is designed to enhance and broaden Core member's abilities to use state-of-the-art imaging facilities at the University of Maryland. The Core will take advantage not only of the current facility in the Laboratory for Biological Ultrastructure (LBU) to carry out transmission electron, scanning electron, and confocal microscopy and for tissue preparation, but also a new EM facility with very high-end TEM's and a new 2-photon confocal microscopy facility. However, despite having outstanding facilities for our investigators, there is limited assistance available to users of the various imaging facilities, and no training or consultation is routinely provided. Central to the Core's strategy is hiring a doctoral-level support person whose primary responsibility will be to enhance the research efforts in the Core faculty's labs by introducing new imaging techniques and innovative uses of established techniques. The support person will be supervised by the Core Director (Popper) and a Steering Committee consisting of the Core Director and the directors of the imaging facilities being used by our investigators. This Core will provide advanced capabilities to the labs already using imaging as a main component of their research and will encourage and assist other less frequent users in becoming more effective users of imaging technology. This will ultimately lead to new collaborative research efforts that would not otherwise be possible, or even imagined (e.g., comparing hair cell ontogeny in fish and birds). Because of the unique constellations of users involved, a particularly innovative use of this Core is the porting of invertebrate techniques to vertebrates and vice versa.