Core Support for Hearing Research - "NIDCD" Research Core Center P30

描述：马萨诸塞州眼耳医院提出了三个研究中心，以促进听力和耳聋的跨学科研究。该研究中心由23名高级调查人员和9名初级调查人员组成，他们都隶属于伊顿-皮博迪实验室(EPL)。他们包括临床医生和基础科学家，与哈佛医学院和麻省理工学院的研究生项目和系有学术联系。该研究基地涵盖了广泛的基础和应用研究项目，从外周力学到皮质处理，从体外系统到人类患者，从动物模型到神经网络。这三个核心和每个核心的主要目标包括1)一个工程核心，设计、建立、编程和维护数据采集系统、定制声学设备和刺激产生系统，提供精密加工服务，为广泛的研究应用建立定制机械设备，并与更大的科学界共享这些软件和硬件进展；2)组织-外科核心，维护现有的共享设施，协助研究小组进行动物外科和组织学准备，进行光学和电子显微镜检查，并不断提高整个中心组织学和外科准备的质量；3)成像核心，支持数字图像采集和分析，包括共焦显微镜、透射电子显微镜、计算机辅助解剖重建、形态测量自动化、三维重建/渲染、功能成像数据分析，并与更大的科学界共享虚拟教学模型。

DESCRIPTION: Three Research Cores are proposed to facilitate interdisciplinary research into hearing and deafness at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. The Research Center comprises 23 senior investigators and 9 junior investigators, all affiliated with the Eaton-Peabody Laboratory (EPL). They include clinicians and basic scientists, with academic ties to graduate programs and departments at Harvard Medical School and MIT. The Research Base covers a wide range of basic and applied research projects from peripheral mechanics to cortical processing, from in vitro systems to human patients, from animal models to neural nets. The three Cores and the major aims of each include 1) an Engineering Core to design, build, program and maintain data-acquisition systems, custom acoustical devices, and stimulus generation systems, to provide a precision machining service to build custom mechanical devices for a wide variety of research applications, and to share these software and hardware advances with the greater scientific community; 2) a Histology-Surgery Core to maintain existing shared facilities, to assist research teams in animal surgery and histological preparation for both light and electron microscopy and to continually enhance the quality of both histological and surgical preparations throughout the center; and 3) an Imaging Core to support digital image-acquisition and analysis, including confocal microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, computer-aided anatomical reconstruction, automation of morphometry, 3-D reconstruction/rendering, analysis of functional imaging data, and to share virtual teaching models with the greater scientific community.