Dear Greg,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript entitled "Temporal information loss in the macaque early visual system" for re-consideration as a Research Article by PLOS Biology. As I mentioned previously, all reviewers have now submitted their comments and the decision is almost ready.

However, before we can communicate it, we need you to complete your submission by providing the metadata that is required for full assessment. (I should have asked you to do this *before* I sent the paper to reviewers, but I forgot – I am really sorry).

Please login to Editorial Manager where you will find the paper in the 'Submissions Needing Revisions' folder on your homepage. Please click 'Revise Submission' from the Action Links and complete all additional questions in the submission questionnaire.

Please re-submit your manuscript within two working days, i.e. by Nov 06 2019 11:59PM.

Login to Editorial Manager here: https://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology

During resubmission, you will be invited to opt-in to posting your pre-review manuscript as a bioRxiv preprint. Visit http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/preprints for full details. If you consent to posting your current manuscript as a preprint, please upload a single Preprint PDF when you re-submit.

Once your full submission is complete, your paper will undergo a series of checks. Once your manuscript has passed all checks, I'll do the assessment and will communicate the final decision.

Feel free to email us at plosbiology@plos.org if you have any queries relating to your submission.

Kind regards,

Gabriel Gasque, Ph.D.,

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology

Dear Greg,

Thank you for re-submitting your revised Research Article entitled "Temporal information loss in the macaque early visual system" for publication in PLOS Biology. I have now obtained advice from the original reviewers and have discussed their comments with the Academic Editor.

Based on the reviews, we will probably accept this manuscript for publication, assuming that you will modify the manuscript to address the remaining points raised by reviewers 1 and 2. Please also make sure to address the data and other policy-related requests noted at the end of this email.

Please submit a file detailing your responses to the editorial requests and a point-by-point response to all of the reviewers' comments that indicates the changes you have made to the manuscript. In addition to a clean copy of the manuscript, please upload a 'track-changes' version of your manuscript that specifies the edits made. This should be uploaded as a "Related" file type.

We expect to receive your revised manuscript within two weeks. Your revisions should address the specific points made by each reviewer. In addition to the remaining revisions and before we will be able to formally accept your manuscript and consider it "in press", we also need to ensure that your article conforms to our guidelines. A member of our team will be in touch shortly with a set of requests. As we can't proceed until these requirements are met, your swift response will help prevent delays to publication.

*Copyediting*

Upon acceptance of your article, your final files will be copyedited and typeset into the final PDF. While you will have an opportunity to review these files as proofs, PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling or significant scientific errors. Therefore, please take this final revision time to assess and make any remaining major changes to your manuscript.

NOTE: If Supporting Information files are included with your article, note that these are not copyedited and will be published as they are submitted. Please ensure that these files are legible and of high quality (at least 300 dpi) in an easily accessible file format. For this reason, please be aware that any references listed in an SI file will not be indexed. For more information, see our Supporting Information guidelines:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/supporting-information

*Published Peer Review History*

Please note that you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. Please see here for more details:

https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2019/05/plos-journals-now-open-for-published-peer-review/

*Early Version*

Please note that an uncorrected proof of your manuscript will be published online ahead of the final version, unless you opted out when submitting your manuscript. If, for any reason, you do not want an earlier version of your manuscript published online, uncheck the box. Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, you will automatically be opted out of early publication. We ask that you notify us as soon as possible if you or your institution is planning to press release the article.

*Submitting Your Revision*

To submit your revision, please go to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology/ and log in as an Author. Click the link labelled 'Submissions Needing Revision' to find your submission record. Your revised submission must include a cover letter, a Response to Reviewers file that provides a detailed response to the reviewers' comments (if applicable), and a track-changes file indicating any changes that you have made to the manuscript.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Gasque, Ph.D.,

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology

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ETHICS STATEMENT:

The Ethics Statements in the submission form and Methods section of your manuscript should match verbatim. Please ensure that any changes are made to both versions.

-- Please include an ID number of the protocol(s) approved by the University of Washington Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

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DATA POLICY:

You may be aware of the PLOS Data Policy, which requires that all data be made available without restriction: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/data-availability. For more information, please also see this editorial: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001797

Note that we do not require all raw data. Rather, we ask for all individual quantitative observations that underlie the data summarized in the figures and results of your paper. For an example see here: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001908#s5

These data can be made available in one of the following forms:

1) Supplementary files (e.g., excel). Please ensure that all data files are uploaded as 'Supporting Information' and are invariably referred to (in the manuscript, figure legends, and the Description field when uploading your files) using the following format verbatim: S1 Data, S2 Data, etc. Multiple panels of a single or even several figures can be included as multiple sheets in one excel file that is saved using exactly the following convention: S1_Data.xlsx (using an underscore).

2) Deposition in a publicly available repository. Please also provide the accession code or a reviewer link so that we may view your data before publication. Please annotate your data files sufficiently so they can be directly linked to each figure displaying quantitative data.

Regardless of the method selected, please ensure that you provide the individual numerical values that underlie the summary data displayed in the following figures: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5.

Please also ensure that the figure legends in your manuscript include information on where the underlying data can be found, and ensure your supplemental data file/s has a legend.

Please ensure that your Data Statement in the submission system accurately describes where your data can be found.

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Reviewer remarks:

Reviewer #1: I appreciate the improvements made to the manuscript. The author has clarified the key points made in my review of the previous submission. I have just one remaining point.

This study uses Ideal Observer-type models to assess loss of information at the level of the photoreceptors and LGN. Previous work assessed in detail the loss of visual information across the retina, from the photoreceptors to the ganglion cells, also using Ideal Observer type model analysis (Borghuis et al., 2009, J Neurosci. 2009, 'Loss of sensitivity in an analog neural circuit'; currently not cited in the manuscript). This study should be cited in Introduction, and it should be made clear in Discussion how the current results relate to those of the prior study. For example, while the prior study did not assess loss across frequency bands, it appears that claims about the origin and magnitude of losses (for example, within the photoreceptors based on assumed quantum efficiency as reported) can, and should be, compared.

Reviewer #2: I thought this was a strong manuscript on the first round, reporting a large body of careful integrative analysis directed at an important question.

The most substantive comment in the reviews, consistent across the reviewers, was the need for a closer discussion of how sensitive the broad conclusions drawn are to specific assumptions and uncertainty about those assumptions, particular stimulus duration. The revision is responsive to this concern. Although some uncertainties of necessity remain, I feel these are now brought out in a manner that appropriately balances between the conclusions the author wishes to draw and what we should worry about with respect to those conclusions.

The author has also considered and responsibly addressed my more specific commments from the initial round of review.

Overall, then, I am in favor of publication of the manuscript in its current form, or something very close ot it, in PLoS Biology.

My one suggestion is that perhaps the discussion could benefit from a simple summary figure that divided up the information loss across the three stages (photoisomerizations to photocurrent, photocurrent to LGN, LGN to behavior) as a function of temporal frequency. Such a plot would allow easy grasp of the main messages of the paper. Figure 5 provides this type of information, but perhaps in the discussion a version that expressed the result in terms of percentage information loss, that averaged across the two monkeys, and that combined the information carried by parvo/magno into one single plot would be helpful to go along with the words.

Reviewer #3: In this revised manuscript, Horwitz has adequately addressed my concerns in the previous version. I have no further comments. I would like to suggest that for future revised submissions, the author submit a version with changes highlighted. This will make the reviewer's life easier and the review process faster.

Dear Dr Horwitz,

On behalf of my colleagues and the Academic Editor, Jonathan Demb, I am pleased to inform you that we will be delighted to publish your Research Article in PLOS Biology.

The files will now enter our production system. You will receive a copyedited version of the manuscript, along with your figures for a final review. You will be given two business days to review and approve the copyedit. Then, within a week, you will receive a PDF proof of your typeset article. You will have two days to review the PDF and make any final corrections. If there is a chance that you'll be unavailable during the copy editing/proof review period, please provide us with contact details of one of the other authors whom you nominate to handle these stages on your behalf. This will ensure that any requested corrections reach the production department in time for publication.

PRESS

We frequently collaborate with press offices. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximise its impact. If the press office is planning to promote your findings, we would be grateful if they could coordinate with biologypress@plos.org. If you have not yet opted out of the early version process, we ask that you notify us immediately of any press plans so that we may do so on your behalf.

We also ask that you take this opportunity to read our Embargo Policy regarding the discussion, promotion and media coverage of work that is yet to be published by PLOS. As your manuscript is not yet published, it is bound by the conditions of our Embargo Policy. Please be aware that this policy is in place both to ensure that any press coverage of your article is fully substantiated and to provide a direct link between such coverage and the published work. For full details of our Embargo Policy, please visit http://www.plos.org/about/media-inquiries/embargo-policy/.

Thank you again for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Biology and for your support of Open Access publishing. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can provide any assistance during the production process.

Kind regards,

Hannah Harwood

Publication Assistant,

PLOS Biology

on behalf of

Gabriel Gasque,

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology