PONE-D-24-23927Effect of Inverted Visual Acceleration Profile on Vestibular Heading Perception.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Crane,

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.

As you will see below, while the expert reviewers were mainly positive about your work, they also raised some concerns, most notably the large between-subject variability (Reviews #1 and #2), the lack of unimodal baseline conditions and eye-tracking recordings (Review #3), and potential differences in the reliability of the responses between the two visual motion profiles (Review #4). Please address these concerns in your revision of the manuscript. I will likely send out the new version to some or all of the previous reviewers.

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Manuscript Click here to access/download;Manuscript;BTC Vis Accel PLoS

v2.docx Yakouma, et al. Inverted Visual and Vestibular Heading Perception"

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Reviewers' comments:

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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: In the current study, the author presented visual stimuli with different temporal profile, namely, inverted, compared to vestibular, and found that it generated less impact on the the combined performance. The results are clear. The manuscript is well written. I do not have many comments. The only query is that although the results are quite clear for the mean PSE shift comparison between inverted and normal visual stimulation condition, yet they are quite varied for individual subjects (figure 4).

Reviewer #2: This study investigates the integration of visual and inertial cues in influencing heading perception during motion. The authors found that inverted visual stimuli consistently biased inertial heading perception less than matched velocity stimuli across different offsets. This represents a novel and valuable contribution to the field of sensory integration and perception. The manuscript is generally well-organized, but I have a few specific comments listed below:

Abstract:

There is a spelling mistake for “whish,” which should be corrected.

Introduction:

It would be beneficial to provide more explanation for the choice of large offset values (±45°, ±60°, ±75°). Subjects might use the discrepancy between visual and vestibular cues to infer their causal relationship (refer to Acerbi L, Dokka K, Angelaki DE, Ma WJ, 2018. Bayesian comparison of explicit and implicit causal inference strategies in multisensory heading perception. PLoS Comput Biol 14(7): e1006110).

Numbers and units are sometimes separated by spaces, and sometimes they are not, which creates inconsistency, for example, '2s' and '2 s'.

Results: More detailed descriptions of the figures within the text are needed, explaining what each figure shows and its significance.

The variation between subjects is noted but not explored in depth. Potential reasons for individual differences in bias should be discussed, including how these differences might affect the overall results.

Discussion:

The interpretation of the results is somewhat superficial. A deeper analysis of the implications of the findings and their advancement of the field is needed.

Provide a more in-depth interpretation of the results, considering alternative explanations and the broader implications.

Bibliography:

Several instances of “Deangelis” are misspelled and should be corrected to “DeAngelis.”

Reviewer #3: The authors present the results of a psychophysical study on heading perception of n=20 healthy participants while they experienced 2 s episodes of passive inertial self motion (15 cm displacements on a 6DoF motion platform, see Fig. 1). Participants viewed random-dot kinematic (RDK) noise fields that simulated congruent (in phase with platform motion) or incongruent (out-of-phase with platform motion) optic flow sequences. The focus of expansion (FoE) of the flow fields was offset +/- 45, 60, or 75 degrees. The hypotheses test the effects of phase differences between visual (RDKs) and vestibular (self motion on platform) and direction offsets on the subjective point of straight ahead self motion. The results indicate that the direction offset of the FoE of RDK visual motion biases estimates of straight ahead self motion in participants who viewed in-phase (congruent) visual RDK flow fields more compared to conditions where the velocity profile of the RDK flow fields was out of phase to the platform motion (Fig. 3). The results are discussed in terms of multisensory integration of visual and vestibular cues of self motion.

The work appears to have been carefully conducted. Some clarifications are needed (see below).

Major revision requests

1) It seems that some control conditions could have been included to determine the extent that the participants were truly integrating visual and vestibular cues of self motion. The most obvious ones would be to place the participants blindfolded on the motion platform to determine their acuity of sensing "straight ahead" self motion without visual input. In the same manner, the participants could have been asked to judge the FoE of RDK flow fields (left or right of straight ahead) in the complete absence of platform motion. The results of these control conditions would have provided a "baseline" for direction judgments about these visual and vestibular stimuli.

2) There is no mention of eye-movement recordings during the different visual-vestibular stimulus conditions. The stimulus displays depicted in Fig. 2 show no indication of any stationary fixation marks in the RDK flow fields. Were the participants instructed to direct their gaze "straight ahead" and if so how was compliance monitored during trials with platform motions? Participants would naturally direct their gaze to the focus of expansion in flow fields. Did the authors note such behaviour and if so how did it influence their judgments about straight ahead with respect to their own self motion?

3) The data from participant #17 should be removed as a statistical outlier and the data analysis should be performed without these outlier data. It is unclear why P#17 was perceiving inertial self motion at +/-45 degrees as "straight ahead" more or less independent of the visual motion cues.

Minor requests for revision

4) Although the writing and English usage is in most cases standard, there is considerable room for improvement. Many small typos (e.g., in the Abstract "whish" should be "which") are evident throughout. Also English usage needs to be checked:

p. 3: "they must share self-motion as the common causation" should be "they must be consistent with self-motion as the

common causation".

p. 3: "Perception of heading direction is an ecologically relevant situation..." should be something like "Perception of

heading direction is an ecologically relevant sensory-based ability..."

p. 3: "... been shown in the current laboratory:" should be "... been shown by our group:"

p. 3: "... (i.e. the perception of self-motion induced by a visual stimulus while stationary) should be "... (i.e. the illusory

perception of self-motion induced by a visual stimulus while the observer is stationary)

p. 4: "... and inertial motion seems required for ..." should be "... and inertial motion seems to be required for ..."

p. 5: "... disparity angle of visual ..." should be "... angular deviation of visual ..."

p. 7: "The subjects wore a helmet that was coupled to the motion platform while ..." The use of the verb "coupled" needs

to be explained here. Was head motion measured independently of platform motion and if so how?

p.9: "... re-presented" should be "presented again ..."

p. 9: "... cumulative distribution function". Unclear if this distribution was normal (Gaussian) or otherwise.

p. 11: "... p. 3: "... in the current laboratory:" should be "... from our group:"

p. 11: "walking through blowing slow ..." should be "walking through blowing snow ..."

p. 11: "... but the influence of the inverted visual stimulus..." could be "... but the influence of the incongruent visual

stimulus..."

p. 11: "... so in most subjects the inverted visual stimulus biased inertial perception." could be "... so in most subjects even the inverted visual stimulus biased inertial perception."

p. 11: "average 64% of the normal one." could be "average 64% of the congruent one."

p. 12: "components that don’t match the visual stimulus." should be "components that are incongruent with those of the visual stimulus."

Reviewer #4: This paper investigates the role of visual motion profile on visual vestibular integration. The authors use two motion profiles one that is consistent with the velocity of the vestibular motion profile and one that is the inverted form of the profile. The paper is clearly written, and it is always nice to see the individual participant data.

I have some comments about the interpretation and analysis.

Comments:

Introduction/Discussion

The data shows that both motion profiles are integrated with the vestibular information as illustrated by the shift in the visual-vestibular PSE. Furthermore, the shift is less impacted by the inverted motion profile than the consistent motion profile. The authors posit that this is I'm the inverted motion profile is less it is integrated. While it is not unreasonable, another possibility is that there is a difference in the reliability of the responses between the two visual motion profiles, which was the case in Butler et al 2014, the raised cosine was more reliable than the constant velocity. This would mean that the inverted motion profile would be weighted less due to reliability and not causation. The authors could address this by analyzing the standard deviation (sigma) values of the fits of the cumulative distribution functions. If this cannot be done the authors should mention this possible caveat in the discussion.

It looks like there is no effect of visual offset (see below for suggested analysis). Were the authors surprised by this and could they write a line about it in the discussion.

Analysis

The data were fit to a cumulative distribution function. If this function is Gaussian, please explicitly state this.

The statistical analysis seems to be conducted in the wrong order; the ANOVA should be performed first, followed by t-tests as post hoc analyses. The appropriate ANOVA should be a 2 Motion Profile (Normal, Inverted) × 3 Offset (30, 45, 60) ANOVA. While it is mentioned that this analysis was conducted, the results concerning the offset are not discussed in the results section. Regardless of whether the results are significant, they are of interest and should be addressed. This analysis would allow for a discussion on both profile and offset. If feasible, this ANOVA should be conducted on both the PSE and the sigma of the fits.

Results

To enhance clarity, it would be helpful to provide additional details about Figure 2 at the beginning of the Results section to better link the mean, bias, and PSE.

In the second paragraph of the Results section, the ANOVA is mentioned. Could the authors clarify this point? Additionally, more information on the individual participant analysis would be appreciated, particularly regarding how the standard error of the mean (SEM) was calculated.

Very minor comment:

there's a typo in the abstract; whish should be which.

Finally, here are some papers that might be of interest to the authors that seemed relevant to this work

Butler, J. S., Smith, S. T., Campos, J. L., & Bülthoff, H. H. (2010). Bayesian integration of visual and vestibular signals for heading. Journal of vision, 10(11), 23-23.

Butler, J. S., Campos, J. L., Bülthoff, H. H., & Smith, S. T. (2011). The role of stereo vision in visual–vestibular integration. Seeing and perceiving, 24(5), 453-470.

Drugowitsch, J., DeAngelis, G. C., Klier, E. M., Angelaki, D. E., & Pouget, A. (2014). Optimal multisensory decision-making in a reaction-time task. Elife, 3, e03005.

Fetsch, C. R., Pouget, A., DeAngelis, G. C., & Angelaki, D. E. (2012). Neural correlates of reliability-based cue weighting during multisensory integration. Nature neuroscience, 15(1), 146-154.

Rideaux, R., Storrs, K. R., Maiello, G., & Welchman, A. E. (2021). How multisensory neurons solve causal inference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(32), e2106235118.

Yakubovich, S., Israeli-Korn, S., Halperin, O., Yahalom, G., Hassin-Baer, S., & Zaidel, A. (2020). Visual self-motion cues are impaired yet overweighted during visual–vestibular integration in Parkinson’s disease. Brain communications, 2(1), fcaa035.

Zaidel, A., Goin-Kochel, R. P., & Angelaki, D. E. (2015). Self-motion perception in autism is compromised by visual noise but integrated optimally across multiple senses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(20), 6461-6466.

Zhou, L., & Gu, Y. (2023). Cortical mechanisms of multisensory linear self-motion perception. Neuroscience Bulletin, 39(1), 125-137.

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Comments.docx

PONE-D-24-23927R1Effect of Inverted Visual Acceleration Profile on Vestibular Heading Perception.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Crane,

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.

As you will see below, the reviewers were largely satisfied with your revisions. However, Reviewers #3 and #4 had a few remaining minor comments which should be addressed. In particular, I agree with Reviewer #4 that the ANOVA design should be clarified.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 08 2025 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.

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• 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.

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Patrick Bruns

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

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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

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: I Don't Know

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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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: The authors have thoroughly addressed all of my questions, and I have no further comments at this time.

Reviewer #3: The authors have responded to each of my queries. However, the revised text needs some editing by a native speaker of English with experience in scientific writing.

Minor points requiring final revision

1) p. 10: "In the current manuscript ..." should state " In the current study ..."

2) p. 12 and elsewhere: "The width of the psychometric function ..." should state "The slope of the psychometric function ..."

3) p. 12 and elsewhere: "... significant effects (ANOVA, 5 DF, F-ratio 0.123)." should state "... significant effects (ANOVA, F = 0.123, df = 5)."

4) p. 12: "Sigma was poorly correlated ..." should state "Sigma was not correlated ..."

5) p. 14: "... we chose to leave it in." should either state "... we chose to leave him in." or rephrase the sentence as "An argument could be made for excluding data from this subject as statistical outliers but, we chose to leave them in."

6) p. 15: "...(I,e. visual only or initial only)..." should state "..(I,e. visual only or inertial only)..."

7) p. 16: "...in some previous studies in the current laboratory" should state ""...in previous studies from our group"

8) p. 17: "...This effect was statistically significant (p < 0.0001 ). Thus,..." should state "...This effect was statistically significant (p < 0.0001 ), thus..."

Reviewer #4: The authors have addressed most of my comments but I just want to clarify the ANOVA and how it has been reported.

It is a bit confusing as in the analysis the ANOVA is given as an offset x stimulus 3(45 deg, 60 deg and 70 deg)x2(normal and inverted).

But in the results it seems to be 6x1 (45 deg x normal, 60 deg x normal, 70 deg x normal, 45 deg x inverted, 60 deg x inverted and 70 deg x inverted).

If it is a 2x3 the DoF should be:

for the stimulus 1,19

for the offset 2,38

for the interaction 2,38

If it is a 6x1 then the DoF is 5 but it does not test the offset and stimulus separately, which means was a followup ANOVA conducted.

Can the authors clarify this.

What I would suggest is for the ANOVAs report the results as F(df1,df2)=?,p< and for the t-tests state t(df)=??,p<!--??.</p-->

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

**********

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<div>PONE-D-24-23927R2Effect of Inverted Visual Acceleration Profile on Vestibular Heading Perception.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Crane,

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.

After assessing your revisions, I feel that Reviewer #4's comment regarding the ANOVA design has not been fully resolved. Reviewer #4 rightly pointed out that for a 3x2 repeated-measures ANOVA design with n=20 participants, the degrees of freedom for the two-level factor main effect are F(1,19), and for the three-level factor main effect as well as for the interaction effect the df are F(2,38). Given that you report F(1,2) as the df of the two-way ANOVA, it appears that statistics were not properly run on individual means. Moreover, reporting of ANOVA and t-test results still does not follow the conventional form pointed out by Reviewer #4 (i.e., "F(df1,df2) = F-value, p = p-value" for each ANOVA effect and "t(df) = t-value, p = p-value" for each t-test). Please address these issues with your next revision.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 19 2025 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,

Patrick Bruns

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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

[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.]

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<p>Effect of Inverted Visual Acceleration Profile on Vestibular Heading Perception.

PONE-D-24-23927R3

Dear Dr. Crane,

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.

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Kind regards,

Patrick Bruns

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you for addressing the remaining issues. You might want to double-check the following points for correctness at the proof stage:

"three-way ANOVA": shouldn't this be "two-way ANOVA" as there seem to be only two factors?

ANOVA df for main effect of factor visual stimulus type: shouldn't this be F(1,19) rather than F(1,38)?

The modified sentence on p. 12 ("When the visual stimulus profile was examined...revealed that the stimulus type") appears grammatically incorrect.

Are the df for the t-test reported on p. 12 ("t(179)") correct?

Reviewers' comments: