PONE-D-23-21002White matter tracts adjacent to the human cingulate sulcus visual area (CSv)PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Uesaki,

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 Nov 27 2023 11:59PM. 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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. 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.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Akitoshi Ogawa, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: 

"This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS; https://www.jsps.go.jp/) KAKENHI (JP17H04684 and JP21H03789, H.T.), Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (JP13J05795, M.U.), and Research Grant for Nanyang Technological University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows (https://www.ntu.edu.sg/research/research-careers/presidential-postdoctoral-fellowship-(ppf))."

Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now.  Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. 

Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: 

"This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI (JP17H04684 and JP21H03789, H.T.), Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (JP13J05795, M.U.), and Research Grant for Nanyang Technological University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows. We thank Yusuke Sakai for technical assistance."

We note that you have provided funding information that is currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. 

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: 

"This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS; https://www.jsps.go.jp/) KAKENHI (JP17H04684 and JP21H03789, H.T.), Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (JP13J05795, M.U.), and Research Grant for Nanyang Technological University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows (https://www.ntu.edu.sg/research/research-careers/presidential-postdoctoral-fellowship-(ppf)). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

4. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

5. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

[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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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: In this manuscript, Uesaki and colleagues use diffusion tractography data to ask about the white matter used by streamlines of the human cingulate sulcus visual area (CSv). In a previous work, Smith et al. established the location of the CSv in individual subjects using a functional localizer, then examined the endpoints of streamlines originating there (as well as various functional connectivity properties). Here, using the same dataset, the streamlines are categorized according to known white matter bundles. They mainly show CSv usage of the SLF I and cingulum.

This is a relatively straightforward contribution to the literature; although not a major advance, it is potentially a useful one, and certainly deserves publication. I do think there is a little work to do to really understand how these fibers travel.

The biggest problem is that 75% of the streamlines are unaccounted for. I understand that the authors think that these represent short-range connections, and that their validity is somewhat in question, but more work needs to be done on this problem. I have a few suggestions. First, I think we need to see these streamlines on their own. In other words, essentially reproduce Figure 5 but remove the categorized fibers (the ones belonging to SLF I, cingulum, CC, etc). Then show additional (coronal, horizontal) views to figure out what these uncategorized fibers really are. If they are entirely short-range fibers, some of them are probably quite accurate; after all, cortical regions tend to connect extremely strongly with nearby regions. There may be long-range fibers in there, too, though. It’s possible that some of them ought to be categorized as one of the known bundles, but have been left out by the particular approach used here.

Second, I am looking at Figure 5 and comparing it to the endpoints in Smith et al., and they just really don’t match up. I think that the authors of the current study are somehow throwing away a lot of connectivity identified in Smith et al. Why is that? I don’t see any or many streamlines that could account for the substantial connectivity shown in the earlier paper with V1/V2/V3 or MT, in particular. One solution here would be to look at the endpoints of all the fibers, and then also the fibers categorized as belonging to the known white matter bundles.

Third, it seems like there are known bundles, especially the middle longitudinal fasciculus and the various dorsal-ventral bundles I’m sure this group is quite familiar with, that should be part of this analysis.

These three comments are related. Basically, I think that there are likely connections that need to be accounted for in one way or another (either explain why they are not there, or categorize them more carefully).

Minor comment

-I don’t think Figure 1 is adding much; I would not include it, but would just refer the reader back to Wall and Smith. As the first figure the reader encounters, it just isn’t that relevant.

Reviewer #2: The authors examined the white matter tracks based on diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) of 12 healthy young people. The goal was to test the spatial correspondence of tracks connected with the cingulate sulcus visual (CSv) area, an region involved in visual-vestibular processing, with known white matter tracks in the dorsal brain. The authors found that CSv tracks corresponded most strongly with the superior longitudinal fasciculus I (SLF I), the cingulum track, and callosal tracks, but not or less with the SLF II, SLF III.

The study reanalyzes data that was already published (as mentioned in text), but with a different analysis approach. Nevertheless, the findings substantially elaborate this previous work and hence are sufficiently novel and relevant. The analysis is solid. However, some aspects of the manuscript should be elaborated.

Abstract: Please do not cite articles in the abstract, because it may be ambiguous, if no full reference is given. Referring to 'published data' would be sufficient in the abstract. Citing the article in text (introduction, methods, discussion) is necessary and sufficient.

l. 111ff: More details on known tracts is needed. This paragraph needs to be elaborated. For instance, what were the criteria for tract classification? How do the different tract categorization schemes differ or agree? How many tracts do the cited references categorize overall? What were the criteria for selecting SLF I, II, III, cingulum, and callosal fibres and ignoring others? Why were only these five tracts analyzed?

l. 233ff: The waypoint definitions for SLF, cingulum, and callosal fibres must be explained more clearly. Why did the authors define them manually? Is there an automatic procedure and why was it not used? What were the criteria for manual selection (e.g., what landmarks were used)? This needs to be described at sufficient detail that an external researcher could replicate it.

l. 255ff: I am a bit sceptical with testing number of streamlines against zero. In fiber tracking, the number (probability) of streamlines will always be > 0 even in random data. A more careful null hypothesis should be chosen. For instance, testing the number of streamlines between two tracks implicitly takes random streamlines into account. Or the authors could test the number of streamlines for each track against the track with the least number of streamlines.

l. 268: More detailed information on the location and size of CSv should be provided. For instance, Talairach or MNI coordinates of CSv.

l. 371 ff: Is it possible that the cingulum track is related to the recently described vestibular pericallosal sulcus (vPCS) region (dx.doi.org/10.1152/jn.00431.2022)? The authors should discuss whether such a relationship is possible (or alternatively why it is not possible).

Fig. 1: This figure reproduces already published work. It is not essential and paritally redundant. It could be combined with Fig. 2 as a sub-panel. I even recommend to drop this figure completely.

Fig. 8: Although I am a bit sceptical regarding reproducing other people's work, this figure may be acceptable. However, permission must be obtained prior to acceptance. Moreover, all abbreviations must be explained in the figure legend. The relationship to the current findings must be shown more clearly. For instance, it is hard to decipher whether the dotted lines of red dots correspond to SLF I or the cingulum tract. Please, be more specific. Using different colors for the two tracts might help.

**********

6. 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

**********

[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.

White matter tracts adjacent to the human cingulate sulcus visual area (CSv)

PONE-D-23-21002R1

Dear Dr. Uesaki,

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,

Akitoshi Ogawa, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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

**********