PONE-D-20-01215

Optimal spectral templates for triggered feedback experiments

PLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear Todd, Both reviewers were very positive. One of the reviewers had a couple of questions that I suspect should be easy to address. The responses to the prior round of reviews appears thoroughly satisfactory, but we couldn't get the same reviewers from last time which requires that we go through the system one more time before a final acceptance can be made.  

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Writing and organization of the article:

1. The organization of Results section appears to be confusing. The first subsection of Results “Template optimization using gradient descent” appears to be a mixture of methods and results.

2. In “Calculating averaged templates” in Methods section, the authors explained how the second slice was calculated as a weighted sum of the first (1/15) and the second slice (14/15). Should the second slice be 2/15 or 14/15?

3. In the caption of Fig 1., “and” is redundant in the sentence: For visual clarity, inter-syllable gaps and are not shown.

4. The authors may identify more literature that is similar to [3] and include those in the citation in the sentence: Our work is based on a popular implementation of TF…birdsong field, to demonstrate this specific field is actually popular and thus enhance the significance of this work.

Content and scientific value:

Method:

5. Instead of stretching the shorter instances and compressing longer instances to match the majority - those as long as 16 slices, will averaging only instances of 16 slices enhance or decrease the performance? One may suspect that averaging over different lengths of instances will distort the data, though intuitively only averaging one length of instances may increase the error to detect the same syllable of other lengths.

Discussion:

6. The offline success of this work may be compromised in the online process in actual experiments due to different asparagus, software, e.g., LabVIEW vs. MATLAB, and the requirement to deliver the triggered stimulus as soon as possible, i.e., balancing accuracy and efficiency. What will the detection performance be once the optimal template is applied in an experiment? Could it be the technical limitations after all to decide the hit rate and eventual delay in delivering the stimulus?

7. How long does it take to acquire an optimized template from raw recordings for one syllable? The authors may indicate this in the discussion as well.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript introduces a new method for template optimizations in operant feedback experiments that rely upon on feedback triggered by a specific set of acoustic parameters, such as a note or syllable containing a predetermined set of acoustic features. In these experiments the animals are rewarded for expressing a particular sound/syllable or altering the spectrotemporal properties of the syllables or songs. The challenge is for the automated system to rapidly and accurately detect when the animal has produced the desired output and provide the reward quickly enough to ensure reinforcement. These types of studies are common in songbird research, which is what the paper focuses on, but one can see how this would be a useful improvement for vocal learning studies in other model systems such as marmosets, and might even offer improvements for automated tracking of speech development or efficacy of speech therapies. I’m familiar with this literature and the techniques described here, but cannot offer much in the way of technical suggestions about the methods. In general, however the computational approach is clearly described and presented in a logical way, and would seem to offer a clear benefit over the other methods currently in use. The manuscript is well organized, appears clear of errors and could be published as in. I confirmed that the software package from Github appears to be sufficient and also found the supporting data repository to be helpful.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Optimal spectral templates for triggered feedback experiments

PONE-D-20-01215R1

Dear Dr. Troyer,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

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With kind regards,

Michael Smotherman

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: