Scientific Core – Summary Abstract The Scientific Core of our P50 Clinical Research Center builds on the long history of shared infrastructure at the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories, and consists of three Research Cores led by PI Liberman: 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 and stock a shared wet-lab facility for histological processing and shared animal-surgery facilities, along with controlled substance licensure, to train new users on histological and surgical techniques and to continually enhance the quality of histological preparation throughout the Center; and 3) an Imaging Core to maintain and train users on the shared confocal and epifluoresence microscopes, and to support digital image-acquisition and analysis, via commercial software packages or, when necessary, via creation of custom software to allow further automation of morphometry and 3-D reconstruction and rendering. The communal nature of the Cores provide a number of significant benefits including: 1) enhancing inter-group communication, 2) providing economy of scale, 3) eliminating duplication of effort involved maintaining separate Investigator-based facilities, 4) helping investigators incorporate new approaches into their repertoire, based on the sharing of technical expertise across researchers and disciplines, and 5) allowing the creation of shared hardware and software systems with capabilities far beyond that achievable by individual PIs working in isolation.