Infant caregiving brain MRI (NDA 2340)

This collection holds the data of a University of Pittsburgh study, funded by the NIMH grant R21 MH106570, that scanned infants at about 3 months of age to find brain structure and connectivity linked to early emotional reactivity. The mothers were young women (19 to 24 years) taking part in the population-based Pittsburgh Girls Study. The study then followed infant emotion regulation to 9 months and asked whether observed maternal caregiving changes the brain-behavior links. Data were collected between September 2015 and July 2017 and are shared through the NIMH Data Archive as collection 2340.

Composition

The archive lists 88 subjects with shared data and 48 subjects with imaging records. Exclusion criteria for infants were birth before 37 weeks, low birth weight, low Apgar score, small head circumference, extended hospital stay or MRI contraindications. Mothers were excluded for prenatal substance exposure other than marijuana. The first paper reports resting-state fMRI and observed behavior for 58 infants, of whom 46 were analysed (22 girls, mean age 3.3 months). Non-imaging data include parenting, infant temperament, postnatal depression, anxiety and maternal attachment questionnaires.

Acquisition

Infants were scanned without sedation during natural sleep after feeding and swaddling, on a Siemens MAGNETOM Skyra 3 T scanner with a 32-channel head coil at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. Resting-state fMRI used gradient-echo EPI with a repetition time of 2020 ms and 4 mm voxels in two 5-minute runs. Later papers analysed T1-weighted (MPRAGE) and T2-weighted structural scans of this cohort. The collection description also planned diffusion imaging; the public records do not confirm diffusion scans for this cohort, so they are not listed.

Annotations

There are no image labels. Subjects carry infant emotional behavior ratings, coded caregiving behavior and maternal questionnaire scores.

Known limitations

The sample is small and from one site. Many infants moved during sleep scans: 10 of 58 resting-state scans were too noisy for the first analysis. The archive does not publish which scan types each subject has, the file formats or the download size. The release year is the earliest documented reuse of the shared data (NDA study 668, 2019). Access requires an approved NIMH Data Archive request.