PONE-D-21-09252

Modality differences in ERP components between somatosensory and auditory Go/No-go paradigms in prepubescent children

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Nakata,

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.

This is an interesting paper. However, as the authors can see both reviewers ha raised major and minor issues that must be addressed. Thus, I suggest the authors revise their manuscript according to reviewers' comments and submit it for further evaluation.

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Vilfredo De Pascalis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

This is an interesting paper. However, as the authors can see both reviewers ha raised major and minor issues that must be addressed. Thus, I suggest the authors revise their manuscript according to reviewers' comments and submit it for further evaluation.

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This study was supported by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research C (19K11576) (to H. N.).

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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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: Thank you for gave my the possibility to read this interesting paper. The manuscript was aimed to investigate the modality differences of Go/No-go ERP waveforms adults in prepubescent children vs. adults; secondarly the relationship between the behavioral response and amplitudes and latencies of ERP components in somatosensory and auditory Go/No-go paradigms among prepubescent children.

The manuscript is well wrote and easy to read however I have important questions to report:

My first concern is about the main hypothesis: in order to satisfy it they could compare a sample of prepubescent children vs. a sample of adult with the same procedure. It is not appropriate to test an hypothesis only comparing own data with other samples in previously published.

I suggest the Authors to report only the second hypothesis on the relationship between the behavioral response and amplitudes and latencies of ERP components in somatosensory and auditory Go/No-go paradigms among prepubescent children and discuss the results comparing with adults samples from literature in the discussion section. Finally they may report the lack of an adult sample in the limitation section.

My minor questions are the following:

The hypothesis is too large. It could be syntetized.

In the method section the Authors could report more information about the EEG system; how many electrodes; how many trials for each condition were considered for the analyses.

In the results section the authors could report the real p value also for non significant effects, and the effect size for the significant effects.

In the discussion section the authors could majorly articulate the interpretation about the immaturity of the cognitive function in prepubescent children.

Reviewer #2: Comments to the Authors:

The purpose of the present study was to investigate modality differences in the N2 and P3 event-related potentials (ERPs) between somatosensory and auditory Go/No-go paradigms in prepubescent children (n = 18). The results generally support the immaturity of motor execution and inhibition processing in prepubescent children.

Major:

As far as I read the manuscript, I have an impression that the authors would want to systematically report the N1, N2, and P3 results in somatosensory and auditory Go/No-go paradigms with the same stimuli and analyses as those in their previous study. Although I understand such situation, most readers would feel that (1) stimuli used in the present study are not well verified, (2) data analysis applied in this study are out-of-date, (3) the interpretation of the data is rather superficial and the conclusion (i.e., immaturity of motor execution and inhibition processing in prepubescent children) is less novel, and (4) new theoretical implication is not very clear, regardless of the fairly large volume of reported data. This paper would need modifications in these respects.

When analyzing and interpreting the data, the authors could be careful about at least for the following three points. First, the authors could be more careful about the overlapping of adjacent ERP components. For example, it was reported that somatosensory N2 at Fz was smaller than auditory N2 at Fz. However, as can be seen in Figure 1, the auditory N2 was immediately preceded by N1 that had the maximum amplitude at the same electrode (i.e., Fz); in contrast, somatosensory N2 was also preceded by N1 that had the maximum amplitude at a different electrode (i.e., C4). Given such a difference, a fair comparison between the somatosensory and auditory N2 seems to be difficult. Second, the authors should carefully discuss how the physical difference of the Go stimulus and No-go stimulus can affect the ERP and behavioral results. For example, readers would simply wonder how physical differences between the Go stimulus and No-go stimulus can be equalize between the auditory (i.e., tones of 1000 and 1500 Hz) and somatosensory modalities (i.e., stimulations to second and fifth digits in the left hand) and how such physical differences can affect ERP and behavioral results. This point should be carefully discussed and properly operationalized in the Introduction. Third, I would not prefer the use of “peak” measures, since it is well known that peak measures are highly vulnerable to high-frequency noises. Although “peak latency” measures are difficult to be replaced with other alternative measures, at least, the authors may use “mean amplitude” measures rather than “peak amplitude”. Anyway, if the authors use “peak” measures, then they should be careful about adverse influences due to high-frequency noises. For example, it was reported that the peak latency of somatosensory P3 was shorter than that of auditory P3 (lines 316-320). This is not consistent with the waveforms in Figure 1. I would suspect that this might be adverse influences of the use of peak latency measure.

Minor:

Results section (somatosensory N1): As can be seen in Figure 1, somatosensory N1 has the maximum amplitude at the right central electrode (i.e., C4). This seems natural, given that the somatosensory stimuli were presented to the participants’ fingers of the left hand. However, the size and timing of somatosensory N1 were quantified for the Fz electrode. This seems unreasonable.

Results section (amplitude of P3): It was reported that the peak amplitude of No-go P3 was larger than that of Go P3 during the somatosensory paradigm (lines 312-314). This is not consistent with the waveforms in Figure 1 as well as the values listed in Table 3. Is it correct?

Results section (scalp distributions): When examining between-condition differences of scalp topographies (e.g., lines 305-307 and 345-348), it is recommended to normalize the amplitude values, for example, by using the method of McCarthy & Wood (1985, Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology).

Results section (general): “p > .05” (where statistical differences were not significant) is not informative for readers. It would be better to simply show p-values. Also, effect sizes should be shown for all statistical tests.

Figure 1: ERPs are shown in a “negative-up” manner. This should be explicitly described in the figure or the figure caption.

Figure 1: Please show the baseline (i.e., x-axis) with time scales in each of ERP waveforms. It should be helpful for readers to visually evaluate the size and timing of each ERP component.

Limitation of the present study: I think that the lack of visual Go/No-go paradigm would not be a limitation of the present study.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Carlo Lai

Reviewer #2: No

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Modality differences in ERP components between somatosensory and auditory Go/No-go paradigms in prepubescent children

PONE-D-21-09252R1

Dear Dr. Nakata,

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,

Vilfredo De Pascalis

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Both reviewers are satisfied with the revised manuscript. The authors addressed all the raised issues. Thus, I am glad to accept the current version of the manuscript for publication.

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: Yes

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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 the points that I rised have been addressed by the Authors. It is my opinion that now the manuscript is nice!

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: Yes: Carlo Lai

Reviewer #2: Yes: Motohiro Kimura