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Data Acquisition

Participants

Six healthy adults (3 women, 2 men, and 1 trans woman; ages 31–47 at recruitment in 2018) consented to participate in the Courtois NeuroMod project for a minimum of five years. All participants were right-handed and reported good general health. Three were native francophones, one a native anglophone, and two were bilingual (English and French). Participants were excluded if they had visual or auditory impairments that would prevent perceiving stimuli in the scanner, major psychiatric or neurological conditions, or did not meet standard MRI compatibility criteria; all were required to have advanced English comprehension. Specific demographics for each participant are provided in [DATA RECORD TABLE]. Participants were scanned one to two times per week, except during personal holidays, illness, or periods of scanner unavailability. All procedures were approved by the ethics board of the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’île-de-Montréal, and all participants provided written informed consent.

MRI Acquisition

Scanner and setup

All MRI data were collected at the Unité de Neuroimagerie Fonctionnelle (UNF), located at the Centre de Recherche de l’Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal (CRIUGM), affiliated with the Université de Montréal. The scanner is a Siemens Prisma Fit (3T), equipped with a 2-channel transmit body coil and a 64-channel receive head/neck coil.

To minimize head motion, each participant wore a custom-fitted polystyrene foam headcase manufactured by Caseforge, milled from a 3D surface scan of the participant’s head and shaped to fit the 64-channel coil.

Functional MRI

Functional MRI data were acquired using an accelerated simultaneous multi-slice gradient echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence Xu et al., 2013 developed at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR), University of Minnesota, as part of the Human Connectome Project Glasser et al., 2016. The sequence was obtained through a concept-to-production (C2P) agreement and run with the following parameters: slice acceleration factor = 4, TR = 1.49 s, TE = 37 ms, flip angle = 52°, voxel size = 2 × 2 × 2 mm, 60 slices, acquisition matrix 96 × 96. At the start of each session, a short acquisition (3 volumes) with reversed phase-encoding direction was collected to enable retrospective correction of B0 field inhomogeneity-induced distortions.

Brain anatomical MRI

Dedicated anatomical sessions were conducted approximately four times per year. Each session began with a 21 s localizer scan, followed by:

Spinal cord anatomical MRI

Spinal cord sessions followed the community spine-generic standard protocol Cohen-Adad et al., 2021 and were acquired during the same dedicated anatomical sessions as brain data. The protocol included T1-weighted (3D sagittal, 1.0 mm isotropic), T2-weighted (3D sagittal, 0.8 mm isotropic), diffusion-weighted (2D axial, cardiac-gated, 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.5 mm), magnetization transfer, proton density, T1-weighted, and multi-echo gradient-echo (3D axial, 0.9 × 0.9 × 0.5 mm) sequences. Full acquisition parameters are documented in the BIDS dataset metadata.

Stimulus Delivery

Visual stimuli were projected onto a screen in the MRI room using an Epson Powerlite L615U projector via a waveguide. For most datasets, audio was delivered via S15 MRI-compatible earphone inserts (Sensimetrics), with a custom impulse response applied online using a finite impulse response filter to correct for headphone frequency response. Sound was amplified using an AudioSource AMP100V amplifier located in the control room.

Two successive hearing protection configurations were used across the project. The initial setup combined S15 earphone inserts, disposable Comply canal tips (NRR 29 dB), and modified commercial earmuffs (NRR 27 dB; Stanley) trimmed to fit inside the head coil. This setup was used for the hcptrt, movie10, friends seasons 1–4, and shinobi datasets. It was subsequently replaced due to pressure discomfort during extended sessions. The current setup uses S15 earphone inserts with custom-sized Comply canal tips selected per participant, combined with memory foam headphone rings (Brainwavz Audio), and was used from friends season 5 onward.

Task stimuli were presented using a custom overlay built on top of PsychoPy Peirce et al., 2019 for all datasets except hcptrt, for which E-Prime scripts adapted from the Human Connectome Project were used. Stimulus scripts are publicly available at https://github.com/courtois-neuromod/task_stimuli.

Physiological Recordings

During all scanning sessions, physiological signals were recorded using a Biopac M160 MRI-compatible system at 1000 Hz, synchronized to the MRI scanner via trigger pulses and monitored with AcqKnowledge software. The following signals were recorded:

In later datasets (see [DATA RECORD TABLE]), eye movements and pupil dilation were recorded using a high-speed infrared camera (MRC Systems) with illuminating IR LEDs; gaze data were processed with Pupil open-source software.

References
  1. Xu, J., Moeller, S., Auerbach, E. J., Strupp, J., Smith, S. M., Feinberg, D. A., Yacoub, E., & Ugurbil, K. (2013). Evaluation of slice accelerations using multiband echo planar imaging at 3 T. NeuroImage, 83, 991–1001. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.07.055
  2. Glasser, M. F., Smith, S. M., Marcus, D. S., Andersson, J. L. R., Auerbach, E. J., Behrens, T. E. J., Coalson, T. S., Harms, M. P., Jenkinson, M., Moeller, S., Robinson, E. C., Sotiropoulos, S. N., Xu, J., Yacoub, E., Ugurbil, K., & Van Essen, D. C. (2016). The Human Connectome Project’s neuroimaging approach. Nature Neuroscience, 19, 1175–1187. 10.1038/nn.4361
  3. Cohen-Adad, J., Alonso-Ortiz, E., Abramovic, M., Arneitz, C., Atcheson, N., Barlow, L., Barry, R. L., Barth, M., Bhatt, D. L., Bhatt, P., & others. (2021). Open-access quantitative MRI data of the spinal cord and reproducibility across participants, sites and manufacturers. Scientific Data, 8, 219. 10.1038/s41597-021-01026-2
  4. Peirce, J., Gray, J. R., Simpson, S., MacAskill, M., Höchenberger, R., Sogo, H., Kastman, E., & Lindeløv, J. K. (2019). PsychoPy2: Experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods, 51, 195–203. 10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y
The Courtois NeuroMod (CNeuroMod) Dataset
Data Overview
The Courtois NeuroMod (CNeuroMod) Dataset
Data Record