SPARC Investigators Detail a Decade of Outcomes in Autonomic Nervous System Research

A newly published paper from SPARC investigators details the outcomes of the NIH Common Fund's SPARC (Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions) program, organized across its four focus areas: Anatomical and Functional Mapping, Technology Development, Translational Research, and Data and Modeling Infrastructure. Since the program's launch in 2015, funded teams have generated cross-species, cross-organ autonomic nervous system connectivity datasets, detailed nerve anatomy, and connectivity resources built for query, visualization, and hypothesis generation.

Teams also developed new tools for recording and stimulating autonomic pathways, built computational pipelines for realistic neuromodulation simulations, and conducted pre-clinical and clinical proof-of-concept studies, in some cases supported by prize-driven efforts to accelerate clinically ready solutions. A parallel effort built a durable, open-science infrastructure for the FAIR sharing, exploration, and reuse of SPARC datasets, models, and workflows. Though the program officially ended in 2025, the authors describe an integrated body of work that has lowered barriers to precision neuromodulation research and left reusable resources to sustain the field.

Read the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42234-026-00213-z