Hanming Zheng1,2 · Jin Yang2  · Dongming He2  · Yan Chen2  · Xiaodong Liu4  · Greta S. P. Mok1,3 · Zhihai Qiu2

1 Biomedical Imaging Laboratory (BIG), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Macau, Macao 999078, China 2 Guangdong Institute of Intelligence Science and Technology, Zhuhai 519031, China 3 Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Institute of Collaborative Innovation, University of Macau, Macao 999078, China 4 Department of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, Peter Hung Pain Research Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China

Abstract

Mechanical stimulation is a widely used sensory paradigm for investigating the neural mechanisms underlying somatosensation, ranging from innocuous tactile perception to nociceptive processing. Studying how such stimuli are represented across distributed brain networks requires imaging approaches capable of capturing large-scale neural dynamics with high spatiotemporal resolution. Functional ultrasound imaging (fUS) has recently emerged as a powerful neuroimaging technique that enables highly sensitive detection of cerebral hemodynamic changes across multiple brain regions in awake animals. Here, we present a multiregional fUS imaging dataset that characterizes hemodynamic responses to graded mechanical stimulation in awake mice. Mechanical stimuli ranging from innocuous touch to noxious intensity levels (0.16–4.0 g; six levels) were delivered to the hind paw while fUS recordings were acquired from three coronal imaging planes sampling key cortical, thalamic, and midbrain regions in eight mice. The dataset includes raw ultrasound recordings, processed, normalized hemodynamic time-series signals (ΔI/I₀, where I denotes the power Doppler intensity and I0 denotes the baseline signal), region-of-interest (ROI) masks, ROI-averaged signals, and functional connectivity matrices derived from multiple stimulus intensities. In addition, fiber photometry recordings were obtained from selected brain regions in a separate cohort of eight mice under the same stimulation paradigm to provide complementary measurements of neuronal Ca²⁺ activity. This dataset provides a unique resource for studying large-scale sensory processing, neurovascular coupling, and stimulus-associated changes in interregional coupling. It may also facilitate future research in pain neuroscience, development and testing of computational models of brain networks, and multimodal neuroimaging analyses. The complete dataset occupies approximately 13 GB and is available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.30552.

Keywords

Functional ultrasound imaging; Mechanical stimulation; Somatosensory processing; Nociception; Neurovascular coupling; Mouse brain; Functional connectivity; Open neuroscience resource

[Springerlink]