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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

Social Reward and Decision Making in Aging fMRI (ds003745)

An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults

Task fMRI and T1- and T2-weighted MRI from younger and older adults playing a trust game, a shared-reward card game and an ultimatum game with a friend, a stranger and a computer, collected to study age differences in social and economic decisions.

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Overview

This OpenNeuro dataset comes from a Temple University pilot study, supported by the Scientific Research Network on Decision Neuroscience and Aging, on whether the effect of social context on reward and economic choices differs between younger and older adults. Each participant came with a self-chosen friend and played three games in the scanner. The first snapshot appeared in July 2021 with trust game data only; version 2.0.0 (July 2023) added the other two tasks and derivatives, and the current snapshot is 2.1.1. A data article in Scientific Data describes it, and the trust game results were published in NeuroImage in 2022. It is released under a CC0 waiver.

Composition

The release holds 50 scanned adults: 26 younger (18 to 34 years) and 24 older (63 to 80 years); participants.tsv lists 27 as female and 23 as male. Each person has one T1-weighted and one T2-weighted scan, a B0 field map and BOLD runs from three tasks in fixed order: an iterated trust game as investor with a friend, a stranger or a computer (two to five runs), a card-guessing game whose gains and losses were shared with the same three partners (two runs), and an ultimatum game as responder to a computer, an age-similar and an age-dissimilar proposer (two runs). Folders named sub-2xx hold only behavioural data from the friends, who were not scanned. Derivatives include fMRIPrep and MRIQC outputs, single-trial activation estimates and temporal signal-to-noise maps.

Acquisition

All scans come from one Siemens Prisma 3T with a 20-channel head coil at the Temple University imaging centre in Philadelphia. Functional runs use single-shot EPI with TR 2.02 s, TE 23 ms and 2.97 x 2.97 x 2.8 mm voxels. The T1w (MPRAGE) and T2w images are 1 mm isotropic and were defaced with PyDeface; acquisition dates were shifted.

Annotations

There are no image annotations. Events files give onsets, durations, trial types (coding partner and outcome or choice) and response times for each task run; the trust and ultimatum files also hold the amounts and offers.

Known limitations

  • Demographics beyond age and gender and the extra neuropsychological data are not available because of an experimenter error.
  • Older adults moved more and missed more trials than younger adults.
  • No data were excluded; users must set their own quality thresholds, for example from MRIQC metrics.
  • The sample is small and comes from a single site.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 50 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 27 54%
  • Male 23 46%

sex in participants.tsv of the ds003745 BIDS repository (CC0), columns age and sex

Modality

  • MRI 50 100%

sub-1* folders in File listing and JSON sidecars of the ds003745 BIDS repository (CC0), NIfTI files counted per subject folder, sidecar fields Manufacturer, ManufacturersModelName and MagneticFieldStrength

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 50 100%

Methods: Participants in Smith et al. 2024, An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults, Scientific Data

Scanner vendor

  • Siemens Healthineers 50 100%

Methods: Neuroimaging data collection in Smith et al. 2024, An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults, Scientific Data

Country

  • United States 50 100%

Methods: Participants in Smith et al. 2024, An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults, Scientific Data

Age

range 18 to 80

0
10
20
22
18-1920-2930-3960-6970-7980-89

age in participants.tsv of the ds003745 BIDS repository (CC0), columns age and sex; Methods: Participants in Smith et al. 2024, An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults, Scientific Data

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 50 100%
  • T2-weighted 50 100%
  • BOLD fMRI 50 100%

anat/*_T1w.nii.gz, anat/*_T2w.nii.gz, func/*_bold.nii.gz in File listing and JSON sidecars of the ds003745 BIDS repository (CC0), NIfTI files counted per subject folder, sidecar fields Manufacturer, ManufacturersModelName and MagneticFieldStrength

Field strength

  • 3 T 50 100%

Methods: Neuroimaging data collection in Smith et al. 2024, An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults, Scientific Data

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wT2wboldSubjects with exactly this set
50

anat and func NIfTI files in File listing and JSON sidecars of the ds003745 BIDS repository (CC0), NIfTI files counted per subject folder, sidecar fields Manufacturer, ManufacturersModelName and MagneticFieldStrength

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 2.1.1 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

Smith DV, Ludwig RM, Dennison JB, Reeck C, Fareri DS. An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults. Scientific Data 11, 158 (2024). doi:10.1038/s41597-024-02931-y. The dataset also asks users to cite Fareri et al. 2022, NeuroImage, doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119267.

@article{smith2024,
  title={An fMRI Dataset on Social Reward Processing and Decision Making in Younger and Older Adults},
  author={Smith, David V. and Ludwig, Rita M. and Dennison, Jeffrey B. and Reeck, Crystal and Fareri, Dominic S.},
  journal={Scientific Data},
  volume={11},
  pages={158},
  year={2024},
  doi={10.1038/s41597-024-02931-y}
}

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.