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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

Visual and audiovisual speech perception fMRI (ds003717)

Visual and audiovisual speech perception associated with increased functional connectivity between sensory and motor regions

Task fMRI with T1- and T2-weighted brain MRI of young right-handed adults who watched, heard or both watched and heard single spoken words, including audiovisual words in background babble. 60 participants from St. Louis at 3T, in BIDS under CC0.

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Overview

This dataset comes from a Washington University in St. Louis study of how the brain handles seeing a talker's face alongside hearing their voice. Young adults saw and heard recorded single words during fMRI: sound only, lip movements only, and sound with video, the last also mixed into six-talker babble at four signal-to-noise ratios. The study found stronger coupling between auditory, visual and motor regions when visual speech was present. The images are on OpenNeuro as ds003717 under CC0 and suit work on multisensory integration, lipreading and speech perception in noise.

Composition

65 adults were scanned and 5 were excluded from the fMRI analysis, leaving 60 participants in the release. All are right-handed and aged 18 to 34 (mean 22.4). participants.tsv lists 45 women and 15 men. It also gives pure-tone hearing thresholds for each ear from 250 to 8000 Hz for 48 participants; the other 12 have none.

Acquisition

All scans come from a Siemens Prisma 3T with a 32-channel head coil in a single session. Each participant has a 1 mm T1-weighted MPRAGE, a T2-weighted volume and six task runs of multiband EPI (acceleration factor 8) in a sparse design, so that words played during silent gaps between volume acquisitions. Each run held blocks of five trials per condition plus null trials with a fixation cross; on half of the trials the participant pressed a button to say whether they had understood the word. A seventh run, in which participants read printed words aloud, is described in the README but is not among the released files.

Annotations

There are no image labels. Each run has an events file with the condition, the word presented and the button response for every trial.

Known limitations

  • The README gives a repetition time of 3.07 s for the functional runs, while the BIDS sidecars state 2.47 s.
  • Event durations before snapshot 1.1.0 were wrong; only the latest snapshot has corrected timings.
  • The cohort is young, healthy and mostly female, so it does not cover age-related hearing loss.
  • Hearing thresholds are missing for 12 participants.
  • One session per subject; no longitudinal data.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 60 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 45 75%
  • Male 15 25%

sex in participants.tsv of ds003717 (CC0), counted per row from the age and sex columns

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 60 100%
  • T2-weighted 60 100%
  • BOLD fMRI 60 100%

anat/*_T1w.nii.gz, anat/*_T2w.nii.gz, func/*_bold.nii.gz in File listing of the ds003717 BIDS repository (CC0), counted per T1w, T2w and bold NIfTI file

Scanner vendor

  • Siemens Healthineers 60 100%

README: MRI data acquisition in OpenNeuro ds003717 snapshot 1.1.0 (dataset_description.json, README, CHANGES, BIDS sidecars and snapshot size)

Country

  • United States 60 100%

Author affiliations in Peelle et al. 2022, Increased connectivity among sensory and motor regions during visual and audiovisual speech perception, Journal of Neuroscience (abstract and author affiliations)

Age

mean 22.4 ± 3.2, median 21.5, range 18 to 34

0
10
20
30
40
50
50
10-1920-2930-39

age in participants.tsv of ds003717 (CC0), counted per row from the age and sex columns; README: Participants in OpenNeuro ds003717 snapshot 1.1.0 (dataset_description.json, README, CHANGES, BIDS sidecars and snapshot size)

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 60 100%

README: Participants in OpenNeuro ds003717 snapshot 1.1.0 (dataset_description.json, README, CHANGES, BIDS sidecars and snapshot size)

Field strength

  • 3 T 60 100%

README: MRI data acquisition in OpenNeuro ds003717 snapshot 1.1.0 (dataset_description.json, README, CHANGES, BIDS sidecars and snapshot size)

Age by sex

Reported cross table. Missing cells were not published (fewer than 10 or not reported).

Female Male
  • 40
    20-29
    10

sex and age in participants.tsv of ds003717 (CC0), counted per row from the age and sex columns

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wT2wboldSubjects with exactly this set
60

From File listing of the ds003717 BIDS repository (CC0), counted per T1w, T2w and bold NIfTI file

License and access

Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer

Access
Open download

Download without an account

Access page

Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal

Public domain dedication. Do anything with the data, including commercial use, without asking and without having to give credit.

dataset_description.json of snapshot 1.1.0 states "License" CC0.

Original license text Version read: 1.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you must do

  • No
  • Share alike No
  • No
  • No
  • Manuscript review No
  • Release code No
  • Return results No
  • Delete after use No

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Peelle JE, Spehar B, Jones MS, McConkey S, Myerson J, Hale S, Sommers MS, Tye-Murray N. Increased connectivity among sensory and motor regions during visual and audiovisual speech perception. Journal of Neuroscience 42(3):435-442 (2022). doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0114-21.2021

Sources

Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.