EEG Dataset for 'Cortical Tracking of Surprisal during Continuous Speech Comprehension'

UPDATE: a more accessible version of the dataset is now available: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7775260

The repository contains the unprocessed EEG data recorded for the publication [1]. The stimuli, and derived linguistic features, are also included. 64-channel EEG was recorded from 13 participants whilst they listened to audiobooks narrated in their native language, English, in noiseless conditions. The EEG was acquired at 1 kHz via the actiCHamp amplifier (BrainProducts, Germany), and the electrodes were positioned according to the standard 10-20 system via to EasyCap electrode cap (BrainProducts, Germany). To align the stimuli with the EEG recordings, the audio was simulateously recorded with the EEG (also at 1 kHz), using the StimTrack device (BrainProducts, Germany). The resulting sound channel was then cross correlated with the (resampled) audio data. The physical EEG reference was located at P04, and the ground was located on the left earlobe. For more information on the subject, stimuli, and recording protocol, please refer to the publication [1].

The raw VHDR files containing the EEG data are located in the folder ‘eeg’. The stimulus .wav files, sampled at 16 kHz, are located in the folder stim/alignment_data. Linguistic features, as well as the story transcripts, are also located in the stim/ folder. For details on how the linguistic features were derived, please refer to the publication [1]. The onsets of each stimulus file for the 13 participants (in seconds) are stored in the stim/onsets.mat file.

For convenience, the raw data are also provided in a format similar to the CND data format [2]. The CND-format files can be found in dataCND. The EEG data for each trial have been extracted so that they align with the audio files in stim/alignment_data. We provide the time-aligned broadband envelopes and linguistic features (at 1 kHz) in the file dataCND/Stim.mat.

If you use this data, please cite the original publication, as well as this repository [1,3].

[1] Weissbart H, Kandylaki KD, Reichenbach T. “Cortical Tracking of Surprisal during Continuous Speech Comprehension”. J Cogn Neurosci. 2020 Jan;32(1):155-166. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01467.

[2] Giovanni DL and Nidiffer, A. "The Continuous-event Neural Data structure (CND) Specifications and guidelines". 2022 Jul. https://data.cnspworkshop.net/CND_Specifications.pdf

[3] Weissbart H, Kandylaki KD, Reichenbach T. “EEG Dataset for 'Cortical Tracking of Surprisal during Continuous Speech Comprehension'”. doi:  10.5281/zenodo.7086167