An open database of resting-state fMRI in awake rats

Rodent models are essential to translational research in health and disease. Investigation in rodent brain function and organization at the systems level using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) has become increasingly popular. Due to this rapid progress, publicly shared rodent rsfMRI databases can be of particular interest and importance to the scientific community, as inspired by human neuroscience and psychiatric research that are substantially facilitated by open human neuroimaging datasets. However, such databases in rats are still rare. In this paper, we share an open rsfMRI database acquired in 90 rats with a well-established awake imaging paradigm that avoids anesthesia interference. Both raw and preprocessed data are made publicly available. Procedures in data preprocessing to remove artefacts induced by the scanner, head motion and nonneural physiological noise are described in details. We also showcase inter-regional functional connectivity and functional networks obtained from the database.