Dear Tomás,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript entitled "Plasticity of visual looming response reveals a dissociation of innate and learned components" for consideration as a Research Article by PLOS Biology.

Your manuscript has now been evaluated by the PLOS Biology editorial staff as well as by an Academic Editor with relevant expertise and I am writing to let you know that, based om the prior peer review history, your rebuttal letter and our Academic Editor's assessment of the revised manuscript, we are likely to publish your manuscript as a Short Report.

We have a few additional suggestions and editorial requests that we would like you to implement already at this point, but there will likely be a few more requests after the full submission of the manuscript.

* We would like to suggest a different title to improve its accessibility for our broad audience: "Extinction and reinstatement of innate fear responses to a looming stimulus rely on hippocampus-dependent mechanisms"

* In your revision, please clearly highlight the conceptual advance of how your study expands our understanding of hippocampal function into the domain of ethologically relevant behaviors.

* We agree with the reviewers that the term reinstatement may be misleading and recommend adopting alternative terminology in the revised version.

* 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).

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.

Regardless of the method selected, please ensure that you provide the individual numerical values that underlie the summary data displayed in the following figure panels as they are essential for readers to assess your analysis and to reproduce it: 1DEHILM, 2K, 3DEFGHI, 4FKHM, S1BEGHL, S2E, S4ABC, S5BCD and S6ABC.

NOTE: the numerical data provided should include all replicates AND the way in which the plotted mean and errors were derived (it should not present only the mean/average values).

Please also ensure that 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.

* CODE POLICY

Per journal policy, if you have generated any custom code during the course of this investigation, please make it available without restrictions. Please ensure that the code is sufficiently well documented and reusable, and that your Data Statement in the Editorial Manager submission system accurately describes where your code can be found.

Please note that we cannot accept sole deposition of code in GitHub, as this could be changed after publication. However, you can archive this version of your publicly available GitHub code to Zenodo. Once you do this, it will generate a DOI number, which you will need to provide in the Data Accessibility Statement (you are welcome to also provide the GitHub access information). See the process for doing this here: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content

* Please note that per journal policy, the model system/species studied should be clearly stated in the abstract of your manuscript.

* Please include the full name of the IACUC/ethics committee that reviewed and approved the animal care and use protocol/permit/project license. Please also include an approval number.

Only after you have submitted the revised manuscript including the meta data, we will be able to complete our editorial checks, so there may be a few more requests at the next stage. Your manuscript will also be seen again by the Academic Editor.

To provide the metadata for your submission, please Login to Editorial Manager (https://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology) within two working days, i.e. by Aug 13 2025 11:59PM.

Please upload the response to the reviews as a 'Prior Peer Review' file type, which should include the reports in full and a point-by-point reply detailing how you have addressed the reviewers' concerns.

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

Kind regards,

Christian

Christian Schnell, PhD

Senior Editor

PLOS Biology

cschnell@plos.org

Dear Tomás,

Thank you for your patience while we considered your revised manuscript "Extinction and subsequent updating of innate fear responses to a visual looming stimulus rely on hippocampus-dependent mechanisms" after review at another journal for publication as a Short Reports at PLOS Biology. This revised version of your manuscript has been evaluated by the PLOS Biology editors and the Academic Editor.

Based 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 Academic Editor and address the following data and other policy-related requests:

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

* Please include the approval/license number of the ethical approval for the animal experiments.

* Please ensure that the figure legends in your manuscript include information on where the underlying data can be found.

* Please note that per journal policy, the model system/species studied should be clearly stated in the abstract of your manuscript.

* Please include a dedicated section in the Discussion on the main issue raised by the reviewers during an earlier round of review at another journal, that is: the behavioral paradigm could be interpreted as a variation of classical fear conditioning, in which hippocampal involvement would be expected. We recognize that you have clarified that your paradigm allows a direct comparison between innate and learned responses to the same visual stimulus (looming disc), enabling you to trace how innate hippocampal representations are later reused during learned fear. Your data suggest that loom-responsive ensembles tagged during innate behavior are reactivated during learned freezing, and that these specific ensembles, rather than generic contextual ones, are necessary for the behavioral response.

You have included this somehow in your response to the reviewers, but we would like to see a specific section on this matter, ideally tagged as (suggestion) "Is extinction and subsequent updating of innate fear a form of classical conditioning?" We think that it is very important that the revised version clearly highlights this criticism and your interpretation based on the presented data.

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 may 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. If you do not receive a separate email within a few days, please assume that checks have been completed, and no additional changes are required.

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.

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://plos.org/published-peer-review-history/

*Press*

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, please ensure you have opted out of Early Article Posting on the submission form. We ask that you notify us as soon as possible if you or your institution is planning to press release the article.

*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

Dear Tomás,

Thank you for the submission of your revised Short Reports "Extinction and subsequent updating of innate fear responses to a visual looming stimulus rely on hippocampus-dependent mechanisms" for publication in PLOS Biology. On behalf of my colleagues and the Academic Editor, Liset de la Prida, 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.

While you attend to those requests, please also make sure to address this request:

Per journal policy, please make the custom code available without restrictions. Please ensure that the code is sufficiently well documented and reusable, and that your Data Statement in the Editorial Manager submission system accurately describes where your code can be found.

Please note that we cannot accept sole deposition of code in GitHub, as this could be changed after publication. However, you can archive this version of your publicly available GitHub code to Zenodo. Once you do this, it will generate a DOI number, which you will need to provide in the Data Accessibility Statement (you are welcome to also provide the GitHub access information). See the process for doing this here: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content

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