This contract will establish the National Temporal Bone, Hearing and Balance Pathology Resource Registry (hereinafter, referred to as the Registry) that will serve as a national resource for both the public and the biomedical hearing and balance research community. The Registry will provide information and outreach services to the public and to health care professionals/practitioners on the donorship of temporal bone and brain tissues for purposes of histopathologic study of the structures subserving hearing and balance. The Registry will serve the biomedical research community by establishing and maintaining a registry or catalog of currently active and inactive human temporal bone and brain tissue collections and by conserving temporal bone and brain collections by brokering the transfer of tissue specimens from inactive collections to achieve research centers. In addition, the contract will encourage the pursuit of research on the structural pathology of human hearing and balance by: disseminating pertinent information to the pathology and otolaryngology research communities, developing and fostering temporal bone professional education activities and encouraging investigator collaborations in the study of the human temporal bone and the brain structures subserving the auditory and vestibular systems.
