A GenBank for language disorders

John Pickrell, Pool knowledge to find the origins of language, New Scientist, September 26, 2006. Excerpt:

Linguists are calling for an online public database, similar to the human genome project, that would allow researchers to collaboratively share different studies of language impairment.

By gathering together studies of developmental disorders that cause communication impairments – such as autism or Down's syndrome – they hope to provide new clues about the origins of language.

Such a database might also help treat language disorders or help people learn foreign tongues, they say....

Research has been piecemeal until now, so [Gary Marcus of New York University] and graduate student Hugh Rabagliati are calling for experts to create a database collecting key data on developmental disorders and how they affect, or do not affect, cognitive and linguistic abilities. They outline their proposal, which has similarities to the collaborative nature of the human genome project, in the journal Nature Neuroscience....

PS:  In the Nature Neuroscience article, Marcus and Rabagliati are explicit that the database they envision ought to be OA.