UW child trauma fear-conditioning fMRI
University of Washington cohort of children exposed to violence, fear-conditioning fMRI study
Task fMRI and T1w brain MRI of Seattle children aged 8 to 16 with and without exposure to abuse or domestic violence, scanned during a fear-conditioning task to study aversive learning. 159 scanned, 147 analysed. Images not posted.
Overview
This cohort comes from a University of Washington study led by Katie McLaughlin on how exposure to violence in childhood shapes threat learning and later mental health. Children were scanned while they learned which coloured shape predicted an unpleasant sound, and their symptoms were measured again about two years later. DeCross et al. (2022, Biological Psychiatry) describe the cohort. Their OSF project was meant to hold the data, but it contains only the paper, its supplement and figures, so the images are not available.
Composition
159 children aged 8 to 16 (mean 12.6 years) were recruited in Seattle between January 2015 and June 2017 through schools, community programmes, shelters, clinics and similar routes. The trauma group had experienced physical or sexual abuse or had directly witnessed violence against a caregiver. Controls had no violence exposure and were matched on age, sex and handedness. After excluding 12 children for an incomplete task, technical problems or motion, 147 remained: 77 trauma-exposed (40 girls) and 70 controls (33 girls). 121 of the 147 came back for the follow-up visit. Symptoms of depression, anxiety, panic, PTSD and externalizing problems were rated with questionnaires and interviews.
Acquisition
All scans used one 3T Philips Achieva with a 32-channel head coil at the UW Integrated Brain Imaging Center. Each child had a T1-weighted MPRAGE at 1 mm isotropic resolution and gradient-echo EPI BOLD during the conditioning task (TR 2 s, 37 slices of 3 mm). The task presented four block types (CS-, reinforced CS+, unreinforced CS+ and a fixation baseline), each four times, with a grating sound as the aversive stimulus. Younger or anxious children did a mock scan first.
Annotations
No image annotations. Labels are trauma group, sex, age, race and ethnicity, family income and dimensional symptom scores at baseline and follow-up.
Known limitations
- Not shared. The paper points to the OSF project for data, but no imaging or tabular data are posted there, and no terms or request route are published.
- Sex and age breakdowns are given only for the 147 analysed children, not for all 159 scanned.
- The trauma and control groups differ strongly in race, ethnicity and family income.
- Only follow-up questionnaires are described; the paper does not report follow-up scans.
Cohort
Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 159 subjects.
Sex
- Female 73 100%
Covers 73 of 159 subjects.
Table 1 in DeCross et al. 2022, accepted manuscript of the Biological Psychiatry paper (OSF)
Condition
Groups can overlap
- Childhood trauma exposure 77 48%Age mean 12.8 ± 2.7
- Healthy control 70 44%Age mean 12.5 ± 2.6
Table 1 in DeCross et al. 2022, accepted manuscript of the Biological Psychiatry paper (OSF)
Field strength
- 3 T 159 100%
Neuroimaging Acquisition (p. 5) in DeCross et al. 2022, supplement to the accepted manuscript (OSF)
Condition by sex
Reported cross table. A dot marks a cell the source does not give.
| Female | |
|---|---|
| Childhood trauma exposure | 40 |
| Healthy control | 33 |
Table 1 in DeCross et al. 2022, accepted manuscript of the Biological Psychiatry paper (OSF)
Age
mean 12.6 ± 2.7, range 8 to 16
No age bins reported.
Methods, Participants (p. 6) in DeCross et al. 2022, accepted manuscript of the Biological Psychiatry paper (OSF)
Modality
- MRI 159 100%
Methods, Participants (p. 7) in DeCross et al. 2022, accepted manuscript of the Biological Psychiatry paper (OSF)
Scanner vendor
- Philips 159 100%
Neuroimaging Acquisition (p. 5) in DeCross et al. 2022, supplement to the accepted manuscript (OSF)
Country
- United States 159 100%
Methods, Participants (p. 6) in DeCross et al. 2022, accepted manuscript of the Biological Psychiatry paper (OSF)
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
The data are not available outside the institution or study that holds them
The paper states that data and code are posted at the OSF project (doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/R8BW9), but on 2026-10-11 the project held only the accepted manuscript, its supplement and four figure files. No images, statistical maps or tabular data are posted and no access process is described.
No published license or data use terms
The data holder has published no license and no data use terms. Any use, sharing or commercial right has to be agreed with the data holder, and nothing can be assumed to be allowed. Default copyright and data protection law still apply.
The OSF project has no license set, and neither the manuscript nor its supplement states terms of use for the data.
What you can do
- Commercial use Not stated
- Not stated
- Train ML models Not stated
- Create derived data Not stated
- Publish results Not stated
What you can share
- Share the data Not stated
- Share derived data Not stated
- Share trained models Not stated
What you must do
- Cite or credit Not stated
- Share alike Not stated
- Sign an agreement Not stated
- Ethics approval Not stated
- Manuscript review Not stated
- Release code Not stated
- Return results Not stated
- Delete after use Not stated
Limits
- No re-identification Not stated
- Location limits Not stated
Citation
DeCross SN, Sambrook KA, Sheridan MA, Tottenham N, McLaughlin KA. Dynamic Alterations in Neural Networks Supporting Aversive Learning in Children Exposed to Trauma: Neural Mechanisms Underlying Psychopathology. Biological Psychiatry 91(7):667-675 (2022). doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.09.013
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.