Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 2, 2020
Decision Letter - Kai Wang, Editor

PONE-D-20-03018

The relevant resting-state brain activity of ecological microexpression recognition test (EMERT) ☆

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kai Wang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This manuscript used white, black and yellow models’ expressions as microexpressions and backgrounds to improve the materials ecological validity of EMERT, and used eyes-closed and eye-open resting-state fMRI to detect relevant brain activity of EMERT for the first time. The main findings demonstrated there were many similarities and some differences of the relevant brain areas between microexpression M and SD.

I have several concerns that need to be addressed.

Main issues:

-About the EMERT’s retest reliability, which experimental results demonstrated that the EMERT had good retest reliability.

-The similarities and differences of the relevant brain areas of microexpression M and SD were not detailedly discussed in “Discussion” section, which tells readers less information.

-Do you have any criterion to choose the types of basic microexpressions or emotion model.

Minor issues:

-On page 5, need a reference for head motion correction.

-On page 7, is there any error for “A ingle sample t test”.

-On page 7, what does “rs” mean.

Reviewer #2: I just three minor questions. One is that the ALFF in abstract should be provided the full name for the first time. The second one is that the referrences should be carefully checked. Third, the language should be edited by a native speaker.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Revision 1

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This manuscript used white, black and yellow models’ expressions as microexpressions and backgrounds to improve the materials ecological validity of EMERT, and used eyes-closed and eyes-open resting-state fMRI to detect relevant brain activity of EMERT for the first time. The main findings demonstrated there were many similarities and some differences of the relevant brain areas between microexpression M and SD.

I have several concerns that need to be addressed.

Answer: Thank you very much for your advice. We have revised the article according to your comments. Please see the blue font in the revised manuscript for details.

Main issues:

-About the EMERT’s retest reliability, which experimental results demonstrated that the EMERT had good retest reliability.

Answer: In the current study, the same participants were asked to do the same EMERT twice. Therefore the EMERT’s retest reliability could be measured by Pearson correlation between the two EMERT. It was found that each microexpression M in the first EMERT was significantly positively related to the corresponding one in the second EMERT and the rs (the plural of r, the same below) were high; and that each microexpression SD except surprise SD in the first EMERT was significantly positively related to the corresponding one in the second EMERT. These results showed that the EMERT had good retest reliability.

-The similarities and differences of the relevant brain areas of microexpression M and SD were not detailedly discussed in “Discussion” section, which tells readers less information.

Answer: Thank you very much! This advice was instructive. We have added the specific similarities and differences of the relevant brain areas of microexpression M and SD. Please see the blue font in 4.4 for details.

The microexpression M is the index of a microexpression type recognition. The microexpression SD is the background effect index of this microexpression type recognition (Yin, Tian, Hua, Zhang, & Liu, 2019; Zhang et al., 2017). The former is a kind of ability, but the latter is the degree that this ability changes in different contexts, which, in turn, can be thought of as the stability of this ability. Therefore, there should be similarities and differences in brain mechanisms between them.

In the eyes-closed resting state, ALFFs in the frontal lobe, insula, cingulate cortex, caudate nucleus, thalamus and vermis were significantly correlated with both some microexpression M and some microexpression SD, which indicates they need emotional perception and feeling. But ALFFs in hippocampal were only significantly correlated with both some microexpression M, which indicates that the microexpression type recognition ability need memory more; and ALFFs in the occipital lobe, parietal lobe, precuneus, putamen lobe, temporal lobe and cerebellum were only significantly correlated with some microexpression SD, which indicates that the stability of the microexpression type recognition ability need cognitive control, consciousness and motion more.

In the eyes-open resting state, ALFFs in the frontal lobe, insula, cingulate cortex, parietal lobe, caudate nucleus, thalamus, temporal lobe, cerebellum and vermis were significantly correlated with both some microexpression M and some microexpression SD, which indicates they need emotional perception and feeling. But ALFFs in hippocampal were only significantly correlated with both some microexpression M, which indicates that the microexpression type recognition ability need memory more; and ALFFs cuneus, occipital lobe, precuneus and putamen lobe were significantly correlated with some microexpression SD, which indicates that the stability of the microexpression type recognition ability need visual, consciousness and motion more.

In difference of eyes-open minus eyes-closed resting-states, ALFFs-difference in the frontal lobe, insula, amygdala, occipital lobe, fusiform, temporal lobe, cerebellum and vermis were significantly correlated with both some microexpression M and some microexpression SD, which indicates they need emotional perception and feeling. But ALFFs-difference in the cingulate cortex and parietal lobe was only significantly correlated with some microexpression SD, which indicates that the stability of the microexpression type recognition ability needs cognitive control more.

Taken together, both microexpression M and microexpression SD need emotional perception and feeling, but the former need memory more, and the latter need cognitive control and consciousness more. Of course, a certain ability requires its related brain areas and memory, but in addition to the brain areas associated with this ability, the stability of this ability requires cognitive control and consciousness. The similarities and differences in brain mechanisms of microexpression M and SD are logical. All these relevant brain areas can be trained to enhance ecological microexpression recognition ability.

-Do you have any criterion to choose the types of basic microexpressions or emotion model.

Answer: We chose the same six types of basic microexpressions as EMERT (Zhang et al., 2017), but the models must contain white, black and yellow people to improve the degree of ecologization for EMERT. So the criterion was as follows: Seven kinds of basic expression opened mouth pictures of eight models (four male and four female, including white, black and yellow people) from the NimStim face expression database (Tottenham et al., 2009) were used as the backgrounds, namely, neutral, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, and happiness. Except for neutral expression, the other six kinds of expressions were used as microexpressions. The pixels of all images were modified to be 338 × 434 with grey background (GRB: 127, 127, 127) (Zhang et al., 2017). Since each model in the NimStim face expression database had only two images for each expression, such as mouth-open and mouth-closed, we chose mouth-open with stable pleasure and arousal, so we were unable to measure different pleasure and arousal of a microexpression.

Minor issues:

-On page 5, need a reference for head motion correction.

-On page 7, is there any error for “A ingle sample t test”.

-On page 7, what does “rs” mean.

Answer:

-On page 5, a reference for head motion correction (adopting Friston 24) was added.

-On page 7, the correct spelling was “A single sample t test”.

-On page 7, “rs” means the plural of r, the same below.

Reviewer #2: I just three minor questions. One is that the ALFF in abstract should be provided the full name for the first time. The second one is that the referrences should be carefully checked. Third, the language should be edited by a native speaker.

Answer: Thank you very much for your advice. We have revised the article according to your comments. Please see the blue font in the revised manuscript for details. The ALFF in abstract was provided the full name “Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations” for the first time. The referrences were carefully checked and we added one referrence. The language was edited by a translation company.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: renamed_67675.docx
Decision Letter - Kai Wang, Editor

The relevant resting-state brain activity of ecological microexpression recognition test (EMERT) ☆

PONE-D-20-03018R1

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Kai Wang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: All conerns have been addressed by authors in the submitted manuscript. So, I have no further questions.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Kai Wang, Editor

PONE-D-20-03018R1

The relevant resting-state brain activity of ecological microexpression recognition test (EMERT) ☆

Dear Dr. Zhang:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Prof. Kai Wang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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