PsPM-TC: Physiological Data from a Discriminant Trace Fear Conditioning Task

Data from 18 healthy, unmedicated participants (8 males, 10 females, mean age 23.89 years) includes skin conductance response (SCR), electrocardiogram (ECG), and respiration measurements recorded during a classical Pavlovian discriminant trace fear conditioning task. The task used visual conditioned stimuli (CS) and electrical unconditioned stimuli (US) with specific stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and inter-trial intervals (ITI). This dataset supports research into the psychophysiological correlates of associative learning, fear memory, and predictive modeling of autonomic responses.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between conditioned stimuli and physiological arousal based on SCR, ECG, and respiration time-series.
• Analyzing trial-by-trial keypress response times to assess participant learning during discriminant conditioning.
• Investigating trace conditioning paradigms using precise CS-US timing parameters (3s CS, 4s SOA, variable ITI).
• Developing predictive algorithms for fear responses using multimodal physiological signals (SCR, ECG, respiration).

Strengths

• Includes precisely timed experimental parameters: CS duration (3s), US pulse characteristics (0.5s, 0.2ms, 10Hz), SOA (4s), and ITI (7, 9, or 11s).
• Contains multimodal physiological recordings (SCR, ECG, respiration) synchronized with stimulus and behavioral (keypress) events.
• Demographics of the participant cohort are explicitly provided (N=18, 8M/10F, age 23.89 ± 2.52 years).
• Dataset is listed as Open Access (green license) on multiple platforms, indicating availability for research.

Limitations

• Key metadata is missing or conflicting across sources: specific column names, row count, dataset size, and last update date are unknown.
• The dataset's scale is limited to 18 participants, which may constrain statistical power for some analyses.
• Platform-provided tags are inconsistent and contain irrelevant terms (e.g., 'Environmental science', 'Philosophy'), suggesting poor curation.

Provenance

Source

Athina Tzovara, University of Zurich

Collection Method

Data collected from a controlled laboratory experiment involving a discriminant trace fear conditioning task with visual and electrical stimulation.