# SFARI_EEG multi-paradigm dataset (Raw)

## Overview
This dataset provides raw EEG from children recorded across seven complementary paradigms designed to assay neuro-oscillatory function spanning basic sensory through cognitive control and motor systems. This dataset contains data for three groups of children: 44 typically developing (TD), 66 autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and 28 sibling of individuals with ASD (SIB) participants, all between 8 and 13 years of age. Data are organized in BIDS 1.10.1 format (Dataset Type: raw).

The scientific motivation is to enable robust, large-sample mapping of oscillatory dysfunction in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) across the major frequency bands (theta, alpha, beta, gamma) using a common acquisition platform and harmonized annotations. By sampling multiple assays within the same participants, these data support both targeted hypothesis-driven analyses and data-driven discovery (e.g., network/feature selection approaches for biomarker development and predictive modeling of dimensional traits relevant to social cognition and motor function).

## Acquisition
- System: BioSemi ActiveTwo, 64 channels (BioSemi64 montage)
- Sampling rate: 512 Hz
- Power line frequency: 60 Hz
- Trigger channel: Status (BioSemi)

## Participants
- To be included in the ASD group, participants had to meet diagnostic criteria for ASD on the basis of the following measures: 1) autism diagnostic observation schedule 2 (ADOS-2) (Lord et al., 1994); 2) diagnostic criteria for autistic disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); 3) clinical impression of a licensed clinician with extensive experience in diagnosis and evaluation of children with ASD. Due to precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a subset of ASD participants (n=9) was not able to complete the ADOS-2 evaluation, as masking requirements impacted administration. These participants instead underwent the Childhood Autism Rating Scale 2 (CARS-2) and Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) for diagnostic assessment. Participants in the TD group met the following inclusion criteria: no history of neurological, developmental, or psychiatric disorders, no first-degree relatives diagnosed with ASD, and enrollment in an age-appropriate grade in school. The SIB group participants met the same criteria as the TD group, except that they had a sibling diagnosed with ASD. Exclusion criteria for all groups included: (1) a known genetic syndrome associated with an IDD (including syndromic forms of ASD), (2) a history of or current use of medication for seizures in the past 2 years, (3) significant physical limitations (e.g., vision or hearing impairments, as screened over the phone and on the day of testing), (4) premature birth (<35 weeks) or having experienced significant prenatal/perinatal complications, or (5) a Full Scale IQ (FS-IQ) of less than 80. 

- See `participants.tsv` and `participants.json` in each specific paradigm for more details.

## Data quality & preprocessing notes
Raw EEG is provided without preprocessing. 

## Notes
- This work was supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI Award # 874845, SM).  Support for recruitment and phenotyping of participants was provided by the Human Clinical Phenotyping Core of the NICHD funded Rose. F. Kennedy Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (P50  HD105352, SM)

# Description of the tasks

## Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR_run)
 
EEG recorded during an Auditory Steady-State Response (ASSR) in children.

- Participants were seated in a chair in an electrically shielded room (International Acoustics Company, Bronx, New York), 70 cm away from the visual display (Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT). Auditory stimuli were 500-ms binaural click trains at either 27- or 40-Hz, presented through HD 650 Sennheiser headphones at 60 dB SPL. Inter-stimulus interval was randomly jittered between 488-788 ms. On 15% of trials, an oddball stimulus presented at a different frequency (27-Hz for 40-Hz trials, 40-Hz for 27-Hz trials) was randomly intermixed among the standards. Participants were instructed to respond via button-press when they identified an oddball stimulus, to promote attention to the auditory stimuli. Stimuli were presented in four randomly presented blocks of 100 trials—blocked by stimulus type (40-Hz standard, 27-Hz standard), consisting of 170 trials per standard frequency and 30 trials per oddball stimulus. 

 Events:
- Codes: '27_Hz_Standard': 21, '40_Hz_Oddball': 12, '40_Hz_Standard': 11, '27_Hz_Oddball': 22, 'Block_27_Hz_Standard': 27,
  'Block_40_Hz_Standard': 40, 'Half_Block_Pause': 199, 'Response_button':1}
- Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

Notes:
- Please cite: <Testing the auditory steady-state response (ASSR) to 40-Hz and 27-Hz click trains in children with autism spectrum disorder and their first-degree biological relatives: A high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) study/https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.08.05.668742>


## Face Processing (FAST_run)
 
EEG recorded during a social attentional task (FAST) in children.

- Participants were seated in a chair in an electrically shielded room (International Acoustics Company, Bronx, New York), 70 cm away from the visual display (Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT). The stimuli, controlled by Presentation software (Neurobehavioral Systems), were faces ('Social') or objects (‘Non-Social’), each shown as upright and inverted images, along with shadow versions. Participants were instructed to press a button as quickly as possible upon detecting a shadow stimulus (presented at 20% probability). A jittered interstimulus interval (900–1100ms) reduced onset predictability. The task comprised 720 trials across 12 blocks (60 trials/block, ~3 minutes and 40 seconds each). Blocks were organized by stimulus category; each block contained only social stimuli (i.e., upright and inverted faces with their shadow versions) or non-social stimuli. There were six blocks of social and six blocks of non-social in total). Face and object images (upright/inverted) were randomly chosen from a pool of 28 stimuli. All faces depicted a positive emotion, (i.e., smiling faces; see the github folder for stimuli). Shadow faces and objects were chosen across a reduced pool of 5 stimuli. Responses were recorded using a response pad (Logitech Wingman Precision Gamepad), and stimulus and response triggers were sent from the PC acquisition computer via Presentation software.

Events:
- Codes: Face_upright=21, Face_inverted=22, Face_upright_shadow=121, Face_inverted_shadow=122, Object_upright=31, Object_inverted=32, Object_upright_shadow=131, Object_inverted_shadow=132
- Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

Note:
- Please cite: in preparation

Intersensory Attention (Beepflash_run)
Cued S1→S2 design indicating whether to attend visual or auditory targets. Primary measures: posterior alpha increases indexing suppression of task-irrelevant sensory input and intersensory attentional gating.

## Audiovisual simple reaction time task (AVSRT_run) 

EEG recorded during an audiovisual simple reaction-time task (AVSRT) in children.

- Participants were seated in a chair in an electrically shielded room (International Acoustics Company, Bronx, New York), 70 cm away from the visual display (Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT). The stimuli, controlled by Presentation software (Neurobehavioral Systems), included three types: a red disc ('Visual'), a 1000Hz tone ('Audio'), and their simultaneous presentation ('Audiovisual'). Participants were instructed to press a button as quickly as possible upon detecting any stimulus. The auditory stimulus was 1000Hz, 60ms tone presented binaurally (75 dB SPL). The visual stimulus was a red disc subtending to 1.5 degrees, displayed above a fixation cross. The audiovisual stimulus was a simultaneous presentation of both. Each trial presented a pseudo randomly chosen stimulus (A, V, or AV; represented equiprobably), with stimuli delivered through headphones (XX) and displayed on a flat-panel LCD (60Hz). A jittered randomly sampled interstimulus interval (1000-3000ms) reduced onset predictability. The task consisted of 400 trials across 4 blocks (100 trials per block), each block lasting approximately 3 minutes and 40 seconds. Button presses were recorded using a response pad (Logitech Wingman Precision Gamepad). Triggers indicating stimulus latency were sent from the PC acquisition computer via Presentation software.

Events:
- Codes: AV=3, A=4, V=5
- Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

Note:
- Please cite: in preparation


## Motor Processing (Motor_run) 

EEG recorded during a mobile EEG paradigm in children. This paradigm is recorded using Lab Streaming Layer to synchronize the camera system (for gait measures) with the EEG recordings. 

- Participants are either standing on a treadmill (30 sec recordings) or walking on a treadmill (5 min recordings) with either no flow (static background with white dots) or a flow (dots are moving toward the participant). The task is to ignore the white dots and to respond when the fixation cross at the center of the projected image rotate (45 degrees rotation). 

Events:
- Codes: 
- Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

## Cross-sensory attentional switching task (Beep-Flash_run)

EEG recorded during a cross-sensory attentional task (Beep-Flash) in children.

- Participants were seated in a chair in an electrically shielded room (International Acoustics Company, Bronx, New York), 70 cm away from the visual display (Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT). A cued intersensory attention task was employed in which each trial consisted of an instructional cue (S1), an intervening preparatory period (cue-target window), followed by a task-relevant second stimulus (S2). 
Participants were directed only to respond to targets within the cued sensory modality (auditory or visual) and to 
ignore any stimuli in the uncued sensory modality. Visual stimuli were presented on a gray background. The cue stimulus consisted of a simple gray line drawing depicting either a pair of headphones or a computer monitor. These cue stimuli instructed the participant which sensory modality (auditory or visual) to attend. The S2 stimuli were either a unisensory stimulus in the cued modality or a compound bisensory auditory–visual stimulus. For both cue conditions, the likelihood of receiving either a unisensory or a bisensory S2 was 50%. Participants performed a go/no-go detection task on the S2 within the cued modality, responding with a button click on a computer mouse using the index finger of the right hand. Participants were cued pseudo-randomly on a trial-by-trial basis to attend to either the visual or auditory components of the upcoming S2 event. The likelihood of a task switch or repeat (i.e. attend to the 
same modality as the previous trial or switch to the other modality) was manipulated such that the probability of a given trial 
being a repeat rather than a switch trial was 70%.The auditory S2 stimulus consisted of two sequentially presented sinusoidal tones (100-ms duration; 60-dB of sound pressure level; 10-ms rise/fall) with a 5-ms interval between presentations. On non-target trials, the two tones were of identical frequency and participants were asked to withhold responses when no difference between the tones was detected. On target trials, the two tones presented were of different frequency. One of the two tones was 2,000 Hz, whereas the frequency of the other tone was psychophysically titrated based on each participant's performance using a staircase procedure administered prior to the main task. When participants detected a frequency difference between the pair of tones, they were instructed to respond with a fast, accurate button push. The visual S2 stimulus consisted of a pair of Gabor patches (100-ms duration) centered to the left and right of the fixation cross. On target and non-target trials the two Gabors were of different and identical orientation, respectively. As with the auditory stimuli, the orientation difference between the Gabors was psychophysically titrated for each participant (see Procedure below), and participants were instructed to respond to targets with a button push. The likelihood of receiving a target stimulus within the cued sensory modality was set at 20%.The inter-stimulus interval between the cue offset and S2 onset (i.e. the Cue–S2 period) was fixed at 975 ms. A black fixation cross was presented in the center of the monitor throughout testing. The inter-trial interval (i.e. the S2–Cue period) was fixed at 1,491 ms, during which the fixation cross remained on the screen.

Events:
-Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

Note:
- Please cite: in preparation

## Illusory Contours (IC_run)

Kanizsa illusory-contour stimuli versus controls presented during central fixation. 

- Participants were seated in a chair in an electrically shielded room (International Acoustics Company, Bronx, New York), 70 cm away from the visual display (Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT).

Events:
- 
- Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

Note:
- Please cite: in preparation

## Rest (Restingstate_run)

EEG recorded during Resting-state (RS) in children.

- Participants were seated in a chair in an electrically shielded room (International Acoustics Company, Bronx, New York), 70 cm away from the visual display (Dell UltraSharp 1704FPT). 1-min eyes-open resting-state was recorded while the participant was just instructed to watch the screen with the eyes-open. A maximum of 6 blocks of 1-min were recorded per participants over the two sessions (two different days) of the SFARI recordings. 

Events:
- Codes: Start_RS: 50
- Onsets are stimulus onsets derived from the Status channel.
- See each `*_events.tsv` for per-run details.

Note:
- Please cite: in preparation