2023/11/22 - A minor error was discovered in the implemented transformation from anatomical to functional space for each given NSD subject (see Technical notes for details). The error is very minor, and so we have not changed any data files.
2023/08/20 - All data and files associated with the last 3 NSD core scan sessions have now been publicly released.
2021/12/16 - The NSD data paper is now published in Nature Neuroscience.
2021/09/03 - The NSD dataset is now released, and version 1.1 of the NSD Data Manual is now complete. A video walkthrough of NSD data files is also now available (details below).
2021/02/15 - Version 1.0 of the NSD Data Manual is now complete.
Basic information
Welcome to the Natural Scenes Dataset (NSD) Data Manual. This web site provides a detailed, technical description of all NSD data files that are available. It will be updated as questions and issues arise. The information on this site is also available as a single downloadable PDF (last snapshot 2023/08/20 - version 1.3) (this may be convenient for performing "Find" queries).
We refer to this as the "NSD data paper". The data paper has some associated online resources at the NSD OSF site. The contents of this data manual assume familiarity with the data paper.
Substantive changes to NSD data files are documented and logged here:
2023/08/20 - The files related to the last 3 NSD core scan sessions from each subject are now publicly released.
2023/05/27 - The files related to the final memory test (nsdmemory) are now publicly released. See Experiments and Behavioral data.
2022/08/15 - In nsddata/inspections/rois/prf-visualandecc/, a few visualizations were incorrect. Specifically, the files "subj02_prf-eccrois_on_eccentricity.png" and "subj02_prf-visualrois_on_angle.png" have now been corrected.
2022/01/26 - For user convenience, we now provide some additional versions of the nsddata/stimuli/prf stimulus files (description has been updated in Experiments).
2021/10/20 - Diffusion derivatives are now available (nsddata_diffusion/) and documented in the data manual (see Diffusion data). Summary b=0 diffusion files (called nsddata/ppdata/subj*/anat/DWI_*.nii.gz) and associated nsddata/inspections/coregistration/*DWI* files have been created to help visualize the quality of the pre-processed diffusion data and their registration to the T1+T2 anatomy. In addition, the "knowndataproblems.txt" file has been slightly updated/modified.
2021/09/03 - Initial public release of the NSD dataset.
2021/09/02 - actually add split-half ncsnr (noise ceiling) files (this was for some reason not completed on the previous iteration on 2021/08/07)
2021/08/07 - add additional files pertaining to BOLDscreen calibration; add information on race to nsddemographics.xlsx; include Phase component of the SWI scans to the raw BIDS data; add split-half ncsnr (noise ceiling) files; add pre-processed eyetracking data and inspection figures
2021/07/23 - design .tsv files for the nsdsynthetic experiment were incorrect; these have been fixed.
2021/05/16 - Added probmap .mgz files (see ROIs) and associated .png surfacevisualizations (see Data inspections)
2020/12/20 - Official version 1.0 release of nsd_mapdata (in the nsdcode repository).
Community-driven content
If you have NSD-related information, tools, resources, tutorials, or links that you would like to share with the community, please contact kay@umn.edu and the information can be listed here.
nsdexamples (http://github.com/kendrickkay/nsdexamples). These example scripts, written by Kendrick Kay, were created to demonstrate some basic loading, analysis, and visualization of the NSD dataset.
nsd_access (https://github.com/tknapen/nsd_access). This toolbox, written by Tomas Knapen, provides a convenient Python-based interface to the NSD dataset. There are also some examples of how to load data and perform basic visualization. The toolbox also enables easy access to COCO image annotation information, including category labels and bounding boxes.