Neural mechanisms of aberrant time perception in individuals with social media addiction

The study was approved by an ethics committee, and all participants signed informed consent forms.The behavioral data files contain basic demographic information, clinical scale scores, and behavioral measures from the time perception tasks for all participants. Study 1 data included 58 participants (29 in the social media addiction group and 29 in the healthy control group); Study 2 data included 59 participants (30 in the social media addiction group and 29 in the healthy control group).

The table files are saved in Excel format (.xlsx), with each row representing one participant and each column representing one variable. Variables include participant ID (ID), group (Group), age (Age), gender (Sex), years of education (Education years), Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS) score, BSMAS), Internet Addiction Test (IAT) score, daily social media usage time (hours/day), depression symptom score (PHQ-9), anxiety symptom score (GAD-7), and indicators related to time perception.

Study 1 further included the point of subjective equality (PSE) and the Weber ratio (WR); Study 2 included PSE and WR under social media cue and neutral conditions, as well as the condition-specific difference measures ΔPSE and ΔWR. PSE is expressed in milliseconds (ms), while WR is a dimensionless measure.Functional MRI data were acquired using a 3T Siemens Prisma MRI scanner. Structural images were obtained using a high-resolution T1-weighted imaging sequence for spatial standardization and anatomical localization; Functional images were acquired using a gradient-echo echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence for the analysis of task-related brain activity.

Functional imaging data first underwent a standard preprocessing workflow, including slice timing correction, head motion correction (realignment), spatial normalization to Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) space, and spatial smoothing. Subsequently, Level 1 and Level 2 statistical analyses were performed using SPM12 software.Unthresholded statistical map files are statistical parameter maps generated from Level 2 whole-brain analyses and saved in the NIfTI (.nii) format.

Study 1 contains 58 individual-level statistical map files, with each file corresponding to the Level 1 analysis results for a single participant (spmT_0003.nii); Study 2 contains 59 individual-level statistical map files, each corresponding to a single participant’s Level 1 analysis results (spmT_0004.nii). The file naming convention is “subXX_spmT_XXXX.nii,” where subXX represents the participant ID, and the spmT file denotes the t-statistic map generated by SPM12.

All statistical maps retain the raw results without statistical thresholding and can be used for further analysis and result validation.The analysis code files contain scripts used for statistical analysis of behavioral data, fMRI data analysis, and the generation of statistical results. The code primarily runs in the MATLAB environment and calls the SPM12 toolbox to perform neuroimaging data analysis. The analysis code is used to perform data preprocessing, first-level modeling, second-level statistical analysis, and related statistical testing procedures.

Due to ethical and privacy protection requirements, this dataset does not include raw, anonymized structural or functional images; only statistically processed image results are made available to mitigate potential privacy risks.