MEG-Derived Symptom-Sensitive Biomarkers with Long-Term Test-Retest Reliability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The  paer is in some qaspect interesting as regards the use of mEG data. The results from a medical point of view could be appreciated a lot.

Moreover the authors must include some details about the signal processing.

This aspect is not faced in the paper. Therefore I suggest to include this item in the next version of the manuscript.

The authors could keep into account the following 2 papers:

Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBSVolume 2015-November, Pages 4110 - 41134 November 2015 Article number 731929837th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2015Milan25 August 2015 through 29 August 2015Code 116805

Document type

Conference Paper

Source type

Conference Proceedings

ISSN

1557170X

ISBN

978-142449271-8

DOI

10.1109/EMBC.2015.7319298

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Automatic preprocessing of EEG signals in long time scale

• Corradino C.^aSend mail to Corradino C.,
• Bucolo M.^a

Complex spatio-temporal features in meg data

Autori

Francesca Sapuppo, Elena Umana, Mattia Frasca, Manuela La Rosa, David Shannahoff-Khalsa, Luigi Fortuna, Maide Bucolo

Data pubblicazione

2006

Pubblicazione

Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering

Volume

3

Numero

4

Pagine

697

Editore

American Institute of Mathematical Sciences

I strongly suggest to include the paper in the references.

THe discussion about that item could be included or in the introduction or in the conclusion.

A discussion  as suggest make of course the paper more appealing to a wider class of readers.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1:

Thank you for your close attention to our work and for your critical comments. We note that the sole suggested specific change is inclusion of two articles in the context of a review of methods. We have reviewed these articles.  and we have considered your larger interest in the methodological advances we describe. Although we too are interested in presenting the method in greater detail, we consider doing so in the context of this article to be outside its scope. We also feel that extending the article in that direction is best accomplished by referring the reader to our methodological publications which we have done.

We have gone through the manuscript thoroughly and have made numerous line edits to clarify the language.

Thank you again for your effort in in considering our work.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper focus on MEG-derived measures of symptoms and clinical syndromes for the diagnosis and monitoring of treatment for chronic sequelae of TBI. Symptoms and clinical syndromes are insomnia, somatization, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, psychological health, and sleep, vestibular, oculomotor, and cognitive dysfunction and sensitivity to history of concussion and/or chronic symptoms. The aim is to validate clinically useful neuroelectric brain measures to distinguish between TBI patients and normal subject. The authors propose this paper as a natural continuation of another report, with the introduction of a random forest classifier to identify individual electrical current instead of weaker method, and they also increased the symptoms and clinical syndromes addressed. This account for scientific soundness of the paper and makes the significance of the content high. The number of figures and tables are also appropriate and clear. The same cannot be said for the structure. Indeed, the main criticism I make concern the structure of the paper. I suggest the authors to present materials and methods before the results and to write the discussion in a dedicated paragraph. The subdivision they present makes the paper poorly structured, unclear, and difficult to follow. Moreover, I suggest an extensive editing of English language and of the punctuation. Finally, the introduction should be revised, eliminating the sentences entirely proposed also in the results and presenting a more extensive review of the existing literature to introduce the topic even to non-experts of MEG.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2:

Thank you for your close attention to our work and for your critical comments. We too are concerned to make our work most accessible to every reader. We note that the primary critique from which almost all of your other comments come is the suggesting that we alter the structure of the article, i.e. the order of the sections. We had initially written this article in the "Introduction --> Methods --> Results --> Discussion" order and had altered that to simplify the reader's access to the material.

We note that the style of placing the Results before the Methods is quite common in academic scientific journals and MDPI does not specify a particular order. Although we certainly have not succeeded with perfection, we feel that placing the Results first and including sufficient information there to make the results clear substantively improves the accessibility and comprehensibility of the material and the reasoning behind the work to most readers, both those work in this clinical/scientific domain and those who don't.  We clearly have succeeded with both reviewers whose reviews make clear that they understood the reasoning behind the work, the findings, and their importance. The material in the Introduction is confined to that which is essential to understand the work. It is written to clarify "the story," i.e. the reasoning and findings, rather than as a review. We feel that this minimizes the effort required to understand the work and makes the material substantively more accessible to all readers. 

With regards the English language and punctuation in the manuscript, we have gone through the manuscript thoroughly and have made numerous line edits to clarify the language. 

Thank you again.