Dear Dr Raposo,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled "The aperiodic temporal structure of human attention" for consideration as a Research Article by PLOS Biology.

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Kind regards,

Christian

Christian Schnell, PhD

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology

cschnell@plos.org

Dear Dr Raposo,

Thank you for your patience while we discussed the revision of your transferred manuscript "The aperiodic temporal structure of human attention" with our Academic Editor.

Based on these discussions, we agree that many of the concerns raised by the reviewers at Nature Human Behaviour have been addressed. However, before sending the revised manuscript back to the reviewers, we would like to ask you to address a few concerns, which we think are not fully addressed so far:

* Reviewer 1 wrote "Second, even if we accept the lack of a correlation as evidence for orthogonality – there are several other links that can be demonstrated that are not linear." We do not think that this sufficiently addressed in the current revision/rebuttal letter.

* Reviewer 1 also wrote "Second, it is unclear why the authors chose to use such a high probability of staying at the current signal value. This results in a signal that is very unlike beahvioral or physiological signals, also raising questions over the reported findings." We think that your response makes sense and that this is about a proof-of-concept rather than about biological plausibility. However, we also think that you could have done better explaining this. Currently, the reviewer may not fully understand your reasoning and hence don’t think their point has been addressed.

* Reviewer 2 suggested to conduct a neural network simulation that gives rise to both a periodic and aperiodic component of activity. The reviewer would probably not fully agree with how you address this point and would likely request you to simulate a scenario where both aspects (1/f and oscillations) are correlated. Is there maybe a middle ground here you can use your current simplified simulation and have some shared variance between the two parameters?

Given the extent of revision needed, we cannot make a decision about publication until we have seen the revised manuscript and your response to the reviewers' comments. Your revised manuscript will be sent for further evaluation by all or a subset of the reviewers.

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Thank you again for your submission to our journal. We hope that our editorial process has been constructive thus far, and we welcome your feedback at any time. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or comments.

Sincerely,

Christian

Christian Schnell, PhD

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology

cschnell@plos.org

Dear Dr Raposo,

Thank you for your patience while we considered your revised manuscript "The aperiodic temporal structure of human attention" for publication as a Research Article at PLOS Biology. This revised version of your manuscript has been evaluated by the PLOS Biology editors, the Academic Editor and one new reviewer.

Based on the review and on our Academic Editor's assessment of your revision, we are likely to accept this manuscript for publication, provided you satisfactorily address the remaining points raised by the reviewer and the following data and other policy-related requests:

* We would like to suggest a different title to improve its accessibility for our broad audience:

Human attention-guided visual perception is governed by rhythmic oscillations and aperiodic timescales

* Please add the links to the funding agencies in the Financial Disclosure statement in the manuscript details.

* 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 that all individual quantitative observations that underlie the data summarized in the figures and results of your paper 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).

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

* CODE POLICY

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As you address these items, please take this last chance to review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the cover letter that accompanies your revised manuscript.

In addition to these revisions, you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow up email. A member of our team will be in touch with a set of requests shortly.

We expect to receive your revised manuscript within two weeks.

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 the following:

- a cover letter that should detail your responses to any editorial requests, if applicable, and whether changes have been made to the reference list

- a Response to Reviewers file that provides a detailed response to the reviewers' comments (if applicable, if not applicable please do not delete your existing 'Response to Reviewers' file.)

- a track-changes file indicating any changes that you have made to the manuscript.

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*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:

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*Press*

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*Protocols deposition*

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

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

Sincerely,

Christian

Christian Schnell, PhD

Senior Editor

cschnell@plos.org

PLOS Biology

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reviewer remarks:

Reviewer #1 (Daniel S. Kluger): Overall, Raposo and colleagues provide concise and satisfactory responses to the issues raised by both reviewers. I only have one remaining concern I would consider to be of minor importance:

I did not find the authors' response to Reviewer 1's comment regarding the interpretation of absent correlations particularly convincing. The absence of a correlation alone is by no means sufficient to claim distinct processes, and I do think the authors' approach to amend frequency statistics by Bayes factor analyses is a good way to go. However, I was surprised that the authors merely added Bayesian statistics without any further comment - at least a brief interpretation of BF values should be added in case (frequentist) statistical comparisons were found to be non-significant.

Dear Dr Raposo,

Thank you for the submission of your revised Research Article "Human attention-guided visual perception is governed by rhythmic oscillations and aperiodic timescales" for publication in PLOS Biology. On behalf of my colleagues and the Academic Editor, Simon Hanslmayr, I am pleased to say that we can in principle accept your manuscript for publication, provided you address any remaining formatting and reporting issues. These will be detailed in an email you should receive within 2-3 business days from our colleagues in the journal operations team; no action is required from you until then. Please note that we will not be able to formally accept your manuscript and schedule it for publication until you have completed any requested changes.

Please take a minute to log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information to ensure an efficient production process.

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 previously opted in to the early version process, we ask that you notify us immediately of any press plans so that we may opt out 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 choosing PLOS Biology for publication and supporting Open Access publishing. We look forward to publishing your study. 

Sincerely, 

Christian

Christian Schnell, PhD

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology

cschnell@plos.org