The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center (HBTRC) is funded by the National Institutes of Health to provide high quality postmortem brain tissue to the neuroscience community. The HBTRC was founded in 1978 by Dr. Edward D. Bird, a pioneer in the application of neurochemical approaches to the study of postmortem human brain. This facility is one of the oldest and largest such facilities in the world and, on an annual basis, it receives approximately 300 brain donations from individuals throughout the United States. At the same time, the HBTRC distributes several thousand tissue samples to more than one hundred distinguished investigators worldwide. The brain collection at the HBTRC is in the public domain and consists of a variety of disorders that include the dementias (Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia), movement disorders (Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease) and major psychoses (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). In addition, this facility collects normal control tissue that serves as a comparison group for the neurological and psychiatric disorders. The overall goal of the HBTRC facility is to assist the neuroscience community in discovering the causes of debilitating diseases of the central nervous system and in developing novel and more effective strategies for treating them.