MIDUS Refresher 1 Neuroscience

The Neuroscience Project (Project 5) of the MIDUS Refresher 1 wave brought a subsample of the Refresher cohort of Midlife in the United States to the University of Wisconsin-Madison between October 2012 and August 2016. It measures how people differ in reacting to, recovering from and sustaining emotional responses, using psychophysiology and brain MRI, so these measures can be related to the health, cognitive and social data collected in the other MIDUS projects. Carol Ryff and Richard Davidson lead the project. ICPSR study 37094 holds the summary and behavioral variables only; the raw images sit in the restricted MIDUS Neuroscience Repository on Globus and are released after a research plan is approved and a data use agreement is signed.

Composition

138 participants, all of whom had completed the Refresher survey and biomarker projects in Madison: 93 from the national Main Refresher sample and 45 from the Milwaukee Refresher sample of African American adults. The restricted data documentation counts participants with each data type: 127 with a T1w image, 124 with task fMRI, 122 with resting-state fMRI, 118 with diffusion imaging and 112 with arterial spin labeling. The images are organized in BIDS. Age and sex of the imaged group are not stated in the public documentation.

Acquisition

One GE MR750 3 T scanner with an 8-channel head coil, in a session of about 1.5 hours: a 1 mm T1w BRAVO image, three runs of an emotional picture task with neutral face probes, one 8-minute resting-state run, field maps, diffusion imaging with 76 directions at b = 400 and 1200 s/mm² plus four b = 0 volumes, and 3D ASL. Electrodermal activity, respiration and pulse oximetry were recorded during the functional runs and are shared with the images.

Known limitations

• Raw images only by application, for a named study team; collaborators at other institutions must apply separately.
• Single scanner and single site.
• Not every participant has every scan; the documentation's README in the access package explains missing data, but that file is not public.
• Public derived measures (FreeSurfer values, atlas-based diffusion tensor values, brain age) are on the MIDUS Colectica Portal, not in this image release.