Le Petit Prince: A multilingual fMRI corpus using ecological stimuli

Li, J.; Bhattasali, S.; Zhang, S.; Franzluebbers, B.; Luh, W.-M.; Spreng, R. N.; Brennan, J. R.; Yang, Y.; Pallier, C.; Hale, J. T.

doi:10.1101/2021.10.02.462875

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.10.02.462875

Le Petit Prince: A multilingual fMRI corpus using ecological stimuli

Li, J.·Bhattasali, S.·Zhang, S.·Franzluebbers, B.·Luh, W.-M.·Spreng, R. N.·Brennan, J. R.·Yang, Y.·Pallier, C.·Hale, J. T.

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Abstract

Neuroimaging using more ecologically valid stimuli such as audiobooks has advanced our understanding of natural language comprehension in the brain. However, prior naturalistic stimuli have typically been restricted to a single language, which limited generalizability beyond small typological domains. Here we present the Le Petit Prince fMRI Corpus (LPPC-fMRI), a multilingual resource for research in the cognitive neuroscience of speech and language during naturalistic listening (Open-Neuro: ds003643). 49 English speakers, 35 Chinese speakers and 28 French speakers listened to the same audiobook The Little Prince in their native language while multi-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging was acquired. We also provide time-aligned speech annotation and word-by-word predictors obtained using natural language processing tools. The resulting timeseries data are shown to be of high quality with good temporal signal-to-noise ratio and high inter-subject correlation. Data-driven functional analyses provide further evidence of data quality. This annotated, multilingual fMRI dataset facilitates future re-analysis that addresses cross-linguistic commonalities and differences in the neural substrate of language processing on multiple perceptual and linguistic levels.

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Li, J., Bhattasali, S., Zhang, S., Franzluebbers, B., Luh, W.-M., Spreng, R. N., Brennan, J. R., Yang, Y., Pallier, C., Hale, J. T.. 2021-10-04. Le Petit Prince: A multilingual fMRI corpus using ecological stimuli. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.02.462875

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