The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control dataset, a theoretically-guided within-subject task fMRI battery

Abstract

Cognitive control is a critical higher mental function, which is subject to considerable individual variation and is impaired in a range of mental health disorders. We describe here the initial release of Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control (DMCC) project data, the DMCC55B dataset, with 55 healthy unrelated young adult participants. Each participant performed four well-established cognitive control tasks (Stroop, AX-CPT, Cued Task-Switching, and Sternberg Working Memory) while undergoing moderately high-resolution functional MRI scanning. The dataset includes a range of state and trait self-report questionnaires, as well as behavioural tasks assessing individual differences in cognitive ability. The DMCC project is on-going and features additional components (e.g., related participants, manipulations of cognitive control mode, resting state fMRI, longitudinal testing) that will be publicly released following study completion. This DMCC55B subset is released early with the aim of encouraging wider use and greater benefit to the scientific community. The DMCC55B dataset is suitable for benchmarking and methods exploration, as well as analyses of task performance and individual differences.

The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control Project

“…Analyses were conducted on two subsets of healthy young adult participants. The first was a set of 55 unrelated individuals (age: mean = 31.7 years, SD = 5.9 years; female = 34, male = 21) for which data from the baseline condition have been described (Etzel et al, 2021) and publicly released as OpenNeuro Dataset ds003465 (named DMCC55B, openneuro.org/datasets/ds003465). The second subset was an enriched set of 80 participants (age: mean = 32.0 years, SD = 6.1 years; female = 47, male = 32, prefer not to answer = 1) that had high-quality data from both baseline and reactive conditions.…”

“…The first session was an out-of-scanner behavioral assessment, geared toward providing a comprehensive profile of individual difference characteristics, and included self-report measures related to personality and psychological health and well-being as well as cognitive tests of crystallized and fluid intelligence, processing speed, WM capacity, and attentional control. A full list and detailed description of these measures is beyond the scope of the current report but can be found at nda.nih.gov/edit_collection .html?id=2970 and Etzel et al (2021). After the out-ofscanner behavioral session, participants underwent three imaging sessions, under which baseline, proactive, and reactive task conditions were performed.…”

“…Aligned with the spirit of Don Stuss in building scientific communities, and with the current push toward open science and reproducibility, we have a strong commitment to make the DMCC data set publicly available. Although the project is still ongoing, we have recently released a subset of DMCC data (from the baseline condition in 55 unrelated participants; openneuro.org/datasets /ds003465) along with a technical description of data components (Etzel et al, 2021). A full release will occur after data collection is complete (estimated 2023).…”

Enhancing Task fMRI Preprocessing via Individualized Model-Based Filtering of Intrinsic Activity Dynamics

“…For resting state and task, the two scans per day were split between anterior-posterior and posterior-anterior phase-encoding directions. Scans were performed at 3T with 1.2s TR (multi-band × 4; see [24, 25] for additional details).…”

“…We briefly describe the general structure of each of the four cognitive tasks in the “baseline” format which was administered on the first scanning day (see [24],[25] for more details on task design and rationale). Subtle changes to task structure were made on the two following days (subsequent section) but were not relevant to our analyses.…”