Functional MRI data of actively discriminating pigeons

Until now, only fMRI studies with humans and non-human primates employed paradigms in which subjects had to actively respond to a stimulus. This extreme restriction on the side of model species implies that fMRI-based insights on most perceptual and cognitive tasks essentially stem from two closely related species of which macaques are difficult and expensive to house as well as laborious to train. The most important scientific problem of this restriction is, however, the difficulty to transfer results to most other vertebrates, especially very distantly related ones like birds. We established an fMRI paradigm in which awake pigeons discriminated in a Go/NoGo paradigm to upcoming stimuli with a beak movement to signal their acceptance or rejection of the stimulus. This dataset contains fMRI and anatomical scans during color discrimination experiment and fMRI time-series for HRF estimation. During color discrimination, pigeons were involved in a Go/NoGo paradigm. The dataset can be used to assess the activated brain networks during color discrimination. It also allows for the investigation of inhibitory networks.
More details can be found in the related publication: Behroozi M., Helluy X., Ströckens F., Meng G., Pusch R., Tabrik S., Tegenthoff M., Otto T., Axmacher N., Kumsta R., Moser D., Genc E., and Güntürkün O. Event-Related functional MRI in awake behaving pigeons.(2020)