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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neuroinform.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fninf.2025.1541184

Developing a Multiscale Neural Connectivity Knowledgebase of the Autonomic Nervous System

Provisionally accepted
Fahim T Imam Fahim T Imam 1*Thomas H Gillespie Thomas H Gillespie 1Ilias Ziogas Ilias Ziogas 2Monique C Surles-Zeigler Monique C Surles-Zeigler 1Susan Tappan Susan Tappan 3Burak I Ozyurt Burak I Ozyurt 1Jyl Boline Jyl Boline 4Bernard De Bono Bernard De Bono 5Jeffrey S Grethe Jeffrey S Grethe 1Maryann E Martone Maryann E Martone 1
  • 1 FAIR Data Informatics Lab, Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States
  • 2 SPARC K-Core, La Jolla, CA, United States
  • 3 Rock Maple Science, LLC, Hinesburg, VT, United States
  • 4 Informed Minds Inc., Walnut Creek, CA, United States
  • 5 Whitby et al., LLC, Indianapolis, IN, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Stimulating Peripheral Activity to Relieve Conditions (SPARC) program is a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded effort to enhance our understanding of the neural circuitry responsible for visceral control. SPARC's mission is to identify, extract, and compile our overall existing knowledge and understanding of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) connectivity between the central nervous system and end organs. A major goal of SPARC is to use this knowledge to promote the development of the next generation of neuromodulation devices and bioelectronic medicine for nervous system diseases. As part of the SPARC program, we have been developing the SPARC Connectivity Knowledge Base of the Autonomic Nervous System (SCKAN), a dynamic resource containing information about the origins, terminations, and routing of ANS projections. The distillation of SPARC's connectivity knowledge into this knowledge base involves a rigorous curation process to capture connectivity information provided by experts, published literature, textbooks, and SPARC scientific data. SCKAN is used to automatically generate anatomical and functional connectivity maps on the SPARC portal. In this article, we present the design and functionality of SCKAN, including the detailed knowledge engineering process developed to populate the resource with high quality and accurate data. We discuss the process from both the perspective of SCKAN's ontological representation as well as its practical applications in developing information systems. We share our techniques, strategies, tools and insights for developing a practical knowledgebase of ANS connectivity that supports continual enhancement.

    Keywords: Knowledge representation, ontologies, knowledge graph, Neural connectivity, Autonomic Nervous System

    Received: 07 Dec 2024; Accepted: 05 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Imam, Gillespie, Ziogas, Surles-Zeigler, Tappan, Ozyurt, Boline, De Bono, Grethe and Martone. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Fahim T Imam, FAIR Data Informatics Lab, Department of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, 92093, California, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.