Relationship between the Somatosensory Cortex Morphology, Cutaneous Allodynia, and Clinical Features of Patients with Migraine
, Nicoly Machado Maciel 1, Eduardo Arruda 1, Carina Ferreira Pinheiro 1, Natália Oliveira 3, Rodolfo Dias Chiari Correia 4, Fabiola Dach 3, Antonio Carlos dos Santos 4 and Debora Bevilaqua-Grossi 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors, Thank you for allowing me to review your interesting manuscript.
The paucity of data on cutaneous allodynia makes this work merit for further consideration. There are few points I would like to raise:
1) can you please elaborate on your sample size. Have you done any power analysis, or would you consider your work a pilot study?
2) Please describe in closer detail your sample methods.
3) To which details was the examiner blinded?
4) could you possibly include any figures? Have you e.g. obtained MRT imagings that can illustrate your findings?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors evaluated patients with migraine (15 with aura, 15 without aura, and 15 with chronic) with 3DT1-based volumetric analysis. Although they speculated a positive relationship between self-reported symptoms and somatosensory cortical thickness, they found negative results. Generally, the method and the presentation of the results are appropriate.
Major comments
Why the authors did not evaluate VBM (difference between groups, correlation with symptoms), and not evaluate areas other than somatosensory cortex although they have the data and it's possible? I recommend adding these results.
The authors should state the lack of healthy controls as the limitation.
Minor points
The information regarding the patients' inclusion criteria was scattered in the method and the result section. The inclusion/exclusion criteria should be presented clearly in the first section of the Methods, like "Inclusion criteria is ... exclusion criteria is ... ", and the number of patients (initially 47, finally 45, etc) should be presented in the first section of the Results.
Use sex/female, not gender/women if the authors mean biological sex, not social gender.
Typos and grammatical error exists and needs checks from the native English speakers.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors revised the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments. The usage of spaces inside the parenthesis in Table 1 should be unified during the proof correction.
