PsPM-SF dataset
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Repository Version: 2020.10.19

This dataset includes skin conductance response (SCR), electrocardiogram (ECG), peripheral pulse unit (PPU) and respiration measurements for 20 healthy unmedicated participants (10 females and 10 males, age range: 19 - 35 years, mean age: 24.2 +/- 4.9) participating in a classical (Pavlovian) discriminant delay fear conditioning experiment with auditory CS, during MRI scanning. Also included are CS and US information, and ratings of CS after the experiment. Simple and complex CS were simple sine tones (4 s), and triads in root position or in first inversion, respectively. US was a train of electric square pulses delivered with a constant current stimulator (Digitimer DS7A, Digitimer, Welwyn Garden City, UK) on participants' dominant forearm through a pin-cathode/ring-anode configuration. After the fear conditioning task, participants were first asked to report their subjective estimate of how likely they were to receive a shock after a given CS in the future, on a visual analogue scale of 0-100. Then they were asked to rate pairs of CS sounds with respect to which of the two stimuli they liked less.

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This repository is curated by the PsPM team, bachlab.org/pspm

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Dataset is described and used in following references:
- Matthias Staib & Aslan Abivardi & Dominik R. Bach (2019) Primary auditory cortex representation of fear-conditioned musical sounds. Human Brain Mapping, 41:4, pp 882-891, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.. DOI:10.1002/hbm.24846
- Matthias Staib & Giuseppe Castegnetti & Dominik R. Bach (2015) Optimising a model-based approach to inferring fear learning from skin conductance responses. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 255, pp 131-138. DOI:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2015.08.009

In Staib et al. 2015, this dataset is denoted as SC1F.

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File Structure:
-README.txt                  // This document
-+Data                       // Folder Containing all data files
|-SF_acq_xx_snY.mat          // 20  files holding measurements for SCR and CS markers
|-SF_cogent_xx.mat           // 20  files holding key presses, task information, and demographics
|-SF_physlog_xx_snY.mat      // 158 files holding measurements for ECG, ppu and respiration (8 blocks)

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Data Files:
- Files holding SCR and time markers, recorded with Biopac Acqknowledge software.
  - Skin conductance (channel 1)
  - Event markers (channel 2) used for synchronization with cogent files, markers are set at CS presentation onsets.

- Files holding:
  - CS/US and task information, recorded with Cogent 2000 Toolbox.
  - Demographic (age, sex).
  - Acquisition settings.

- Files holding heart beat, respiration and time markers, recorded with Philips Scanphyslog software.
  - Raw vectorcardiogram data 1 (channel 1)
  - Raw vectorcardiogram data 2 (channel 2)
  - Filtered vectorcardiogram data 1 (channel 3)
  - Filtered vectorcardiogram data 2 (channel 4)
  - Peripheral pulse unit (channel 5)
  - Respiration (channel 6)
  - Event markers (channel 7) set by the MRI scanner at slices onsets.
  	The first marker was synchronized with the block start in the cogent file.
  	Two participants have no marker channel due to technical faults (see excludes.txt)
  	and one participant has two missing files and should be treated carefully.

The data file name is composed of:
- SF                  The dataset name
- acq/cogent/physlog  The type of data recorded (see above)
- XX                  The subject number
- Y                   The session number

Data are stored as .mat files for use with MATLAB (The MathWorks Inc., Natick, USA) in a format readable by the PsPM toolbox (bachlab.org/pspm). All Matlab files are saved in MATLAB 9.7 (R2019b) format.