What is SPARC?

The SPARC Data and Resource Center (DRC) was initially funded through a significant 8-year investment by the NIH Office of the Director to serve as the data integration, analysis, mapping, and publishing platform for the NIH Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program, focused mainly on improving our understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to support the development of more effective neuromodulation therapies.

The Repository

In 2023, SPARC transitioned to an open repository, expanding scope beyond the ANS to accept relevant datasets from the broader community of individual researchers, consortia, and industry. By broadening its mission, SPARC aims to fill gaps in the current neuroscience repository landscape by focusing on the entirety of the peripheral nervous system and its end-organ/CNS interactions. Read SPARC's full Mission on our About Page. Visit the History of SPARC to learn more.

The Portal

The SPARC Portal, sparc.science, provides a unified interface to the SPARC repository, tools, and services. It hosts high-quality, multi-species, and multi-modal datasets (e.g., datasets, simulation models, anatomical scaffolds, and device designs) bridging the body and the brain through its focus on the peripheral nervous system (PNS), end-organ physiology, and the central nervous system (CNS) below the brainstem. Learn More

With its unique focus on the peripheral nervous system and systems physiology, the SPARC Portal provides a critical neuroscience-focused resource.

The People

The SPARC Portal is developed as a collaborative initiative to merge functionality from different domains into a single-entry point and integrated platform for the Biomspedical Research community. The SPARC Data and Resource Center (DRC) is charged with creating, upholding, and implemented the SPARC Mission via four core functions: Data Coordination (DAT-Core), Map Synthesis (MAP-Core), Modeling and Simulation (SIM-Core), and Knowledge Management (K-Core). Learn More.

The DRC is keeping the SPARC name but no longer expand the acronym to reflect our broader focus.

The Community

We are committed to ensuring the SPARC Portal's continued operation as an active, unique open repository. Our goal is to establish the SPARC Portal as a sustainable and interoperable pillar of the biomedical data ecosystem. We strongly believe that user engagement is key to creating a vibrant community that fosters data sharing and integration. We view SPARC as a community ecosystem. Learn More

SPARC provides a community hub for rapidly developing and highly integrative fields, such as neuromodulation, interoception, and gut-brain interactions.