PONE-D-19-35654

Effect of bilateral contraction on the ability and accuracy of rapid force production at submaximal force level

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ohta,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Riccardo Di Giminiani

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

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: Well designed and well presented manuscript. The authors successfully achieved their stated purpose. The authors should replace the bar plots in figures 3-5 with raincloud plots. Below are some links on raincloud plots:

https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/4-63#:~:text=In%20essence%2C%20raincloud%20plots%20combine,error%2C%20such%20as%20a%20boxplot.

https://micahallen.org/2018/03/15/introducing-raincloud-plots/

https://github.com/RainCloudPlots/RainCloudPlots

Reviewer #2: Comments for “Effect of bilateral contraction on the ability and accuracy of rapid force production at submaximal force level”

The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of bilateral contraction on the ability and accuracy of rapid force development (RFD) at the submaximal force level. Eleven subjects performed unilateral (UL) and bilateral (BL) grip contractions at the 30% and 50% of the MVC. No differences were found for RFD between UL and BL contractions in both 30% and 50% MVC. The absolute force error of BL contraction was higher than UL contraction in 30% and 50% of MVC.

One major concern is that the study only examined the force data. If there were other mechanistic variables measured (e.g., rate of EMG rise, etc.), it will be a much-completed nice study. Additionally, one experimental setup regarding the target force (30% and 50% MVC) contraction has flaws and could be influencing the results (see my comments in the later section). Following are my detailed comments:

Abstract

Please add mean and standard deviation values as well as the p-values when reporting the results. In addition, the author should also report the effect size value.

Introduction

Lines 55-57, the author missed a few more recent literatures regarding the BLD in peak force and RFD:

Carr, J. C., Bemben, M. G., Black, C. D., Ye, X., & DeFreitas, J. M. (2020). Bilateral deficit in strength but not rapid force during maximal handgrip contractions. European Journal of Sport Science, 1-8.

Ye, X., Miller, W. M., Jeon, S., & Carr, J. C. (2019). Sex comparisons of the bilateral deficit in proximal and distal upper body limb muscles. Human movement science, 64, 329-337.

Lines 59-60, this statement is not accurate. There are a few recent articles regarding submaximal contractions and accuracy:

Brustio, P. R., Casale, R., Buttacchio, G., Calabrese, M., Bruzzone, M., Rainoldi, A., & Boccia, G. (2019). Relevance of evaluating the rate of torque development in ballistic contractions of submaximal amplitude. Physiological measurement, 40(2), 025002.

Boccia, G., Dardanello, D., Brustio, P. R., Tarperi, C., Festa, L., Zoppirolli, C., ... & Rainoldi, A. (2018). Neuromuscular fatigue does not impair the rate of force development in ballistic contractions of submaximal amplitudes. Frontiers in physiology, 9, 1503.

Lines 70-71, only using the force data would still be difficult to have a better understanding of BLD.

Lines 72-73, what made the author have such hypothesis? Please comment and clarify.

Methods

Participants: how was the sample size (11) determined?

It was also reported that females and males may have the different bilateral index, especially for the hand muscle (see study: Ye, X., Miller, W. M., Jeon, S., & Carr, J. C. (2019). Sex comparisons of the bilateral deficit in proximal and distal upper body limb muscles. Human movement science, 64, 329-337.). Please justify why you used the mixed sexes for your experiment.

Lines 121-124, and lines 155-157, it was suggested that targeting the force levels can slow the rate of force production (Gordon, J., Ghez, C. Trajectory control in targeted force impulses. Exp Brain Res 67, 241–252 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00248546). How can the author ensure the RFD in the current study was not influenced by the experimental setup?

Line 165, please explain the “32-point window”, how long is this window?

In addition, when calculating RFD, how was the onset of the force signal determined? I could not find the description.

Line 170, when calculating force error, what was the time window used in the calculations?

Results and Discussion

Overall, the results are hard to follow.

Line 207, Cohen’s d = 0.11, belongs to trivial size.

Please change all the “effect size index” to “effect size”. Also, consider using small, medium, large to describe the effect size.

For the discussion, limitations of the experiment should be pointed out.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-19-35654R1

Effect of bilateral contraction on the ability and accuracy of rapid force production at submaximal force level

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ohta,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process

Please submit your revised manuscript by 20 Genuary. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Riccardo Di Giminiani

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

**********

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: Yes

**********

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: The authors have addressed all concerns. The authors should consider using linear mixed models to analyze individual trials in any future work on this topic, rather than averaging trials and using ANOVA as in the current study.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for addressing my previous comments and revising the manuscript accordingly. Most of the comments were well-addressed.

Previously, I asked "how was the sample size (11) determined?", because I wanted to see if the author had run a power analysis. The current sample size might be underpowered. If this is the case, then it should be mentioned in the Limitation.

Previously, I asked "How can the author ensure the RFD in the current study was not influenced by the experimental setup?". I am fine with the response. The author also mentioned "Moreover, in the present study, familiarization session is set up to get used to being able to exert rapid force under the submaximal target force levels." So, please briefly describe what the subjects did during the familiarization.

I saw from Figure 2, that how force error was calculated. What if the actual force was below the target force (the 30% or 50% of the MVC)?

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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.

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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

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Effect of bilateral contraction on the ability and accuracy of rapid force production at submaximal force level

PONE-D-19-35654R2

Dear Dr. Ohta,

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.

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Kind regards,

Riccardo Di Giminiani

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

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 #2: Yes

**********

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

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 #2: Yes

**********

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 #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 #2: Thank you for the patience. All the comments have been addressed now. I have now further questions or concerns.

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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 #2: No