We present a publicly available dataset of 227 healthy participants comprising a young (N=153, 25.1±3.1 years, range 20–35 years, 45 female) and an elderly group (N=74, 67.6±4.7 years, range 59–77 years, 37 female) acquired cross-sectionally in Leipzig, Germany, between 2013 and 2015 to study mind-body-emotion interactions. During a two-day assessment, participants completed MRI at 3 Tesla (resting-state fMRI, quantitative T1 (MP2RAGE), T2-weighted, FLAIR, SWI/QSM, DWI) and a 62-channel EEG experiment at rest. During task-free resting-state fMRI, cardiovascular measures (blood pressure, heart rate, pulse, respiration) were continuously acquired. Anthropometrics, blood samples, and urine drug tests were obtained. Psychiatric symptoms were identified with Standardized Clinical Interview for DSM IV (SCID-I), Hamilton Depression Scale, and Borderline Symptoms List. Psychological assessment comprised 6 cognitive tests as well as 21 questionnaires related to emotional behavior, personality traits and tendencies, eating behavior, and addictive behavior. We provide information on study design, methods, and details of the data. This dataset is part of the larger MPI Leipzig Mind-Brain-Body database.

Perception and cognition oscillate with fluctuating bodily states. For example, visual processing has been shown to change with alternating cardiac phases. Here, we study the heartbeat's role for active information sampling-testing whether humans implicitly act upon their environment so that relevant signals appear during preferred cardiac phases. During the encoding period of a visual memory experiment, participants clicked through a set of emotional pictures to memorize them for a later recognition test. By self-paced key press, they actively prompted the onset of short (100 ms) presented pictures. Simultaneously recorded electrocardiograms allowed us to analyze the self-initiated picture onsets relative to the heartbeat. We find that self-initiated picture onsets vary across the cardiac cycle, showing an increase during cardiac systole, while memory performance was not affected by the heartbeat. We conclude that active information sampling integrates heart-related signals, thereby extending previous findings on the association between body-brain interactions and behavior. K E Y W O R D Scardiovascular, emotion, interoception, memory, sensation/perception, young adults 2 of 16 | KUNZENDORF Et al. Cardiac activity occurs in a cycle of two phases: During diastole, the ventricles relax to be filled with blood; during systole, the ventricles contract and eject blood into the arteries, while visceral pathways send information about each heartbeat to the brain (Critchley & Harrison, 2013). Such natural phasic changes of the cardiovascular state have been mainly associated with variations in perception. For sensory processing, which is typically measured with detection tasks or reaction time tasks, response to passively presented stimuli has been shown to be attenuated during early cardiac phases (i.e., during systole) or relatively enhanced at later time points in the cardiac cycle (i.e., at diastole;

1Perception and cognition oscillate with fluctuating bodily states. For example, visual pro-2 cessing has been shown to change with alternating cardiac phases. Here, we study the 3 heartbeat's role for active information sampling-testing whether humans implicitly act upon 4 their environment so that relevant signals appear during preferred cardiac phases. 5During the encoding period of a visual memory experiment, participants clicked 6 through a set of emotional pictures to memorize them for a later recognition test. By self-7 paced key press, they actively prompted the onset of shortly (100-ms) presented pictures. 8Simultaneously recorded electrocardiograms allowed us to analyse the self-initiated picture 9 onsets relative to the heartbeat. We find that self-initiated picture onsets vary across the car-10 diac cycle, showing an increase during cardiac systole, while memory performance was not 11 affected by the heartbeat. We conclude that active information sampling integrates heart-12 related signals, thereby extending previous findings on the association between body-brain 13 interactions and behaviour.