PCLM-D-22-00077

Differences in Interference Processing and Frontal Brain Function with Climate Trauma from California’s Deadliest Wildfire

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Mishra,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’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 Oct 29 2022 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 climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ 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 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'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Fanli Jia

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please provide your detailed Funding Information statement in the Online Submission Form. 

2. In the online submission form, you indicated that [Insert text from online submission form here]. All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information.

This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons by return email and your exemption request will be escalated to the editor for approval. Your exemption request will be handled independently and will not hold up the peer review process, but will need to be resolved should your manuscript be accepted for publication. One of the Editorial team will then be in touch if there are any issues.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. 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

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate 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: This study investigated neural activity recorded with EEG during several tasks testing attention, memory and executive control in individuals exposed to a wildfire and compared it to activity in people indirectly exposed to the wildfire and non-exposed participants. The manuscript is well-written and offers novel insights into cognitive effects of climate trauma. Below are some suggestions which I believe could improve this manuscript.

It is interesting that the indirectly exposed group had higher scores on depression than the directly exposed group. Is the difference between those two groups significant and is it possible to investigate what might be driving this? Did the group that was indirectly exposed have higher levels of depression pre-exposure?

It might be more interesting to plot the results in Figure 2 as individual points, i.e., a scatterplot per group and task with the mean and SD overlayed. This might give an indication whether a few outliers in a group drove the overall group effect and should be excluded.

The analysis focused on specific electrodes based on a-priori hypothesis. Since this is a relatively new area to investigate, I am wondering if an analysis of the entire electrode space might reveal additional insights. Such analyses are easily conducted in SPM12 for example.

Minor: please change ‘race’ to ‘ethnicity’

Reviewer #2: main points:

This paper provided evidence for the deficit in executive function in individuals who went through the wide fire caused by extreme climate change. The results stressed the demand to investigate the population from the perspective of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. It also introduced an effective system that can be used to conduct screening in community-based settings due to its feature of feasibility and convenience, which had great implications for future researchers and clinicians when discussing and investigating the mental health problem caused by climate change.

With a validated measurement system combining cognitive ability tests and synchronized EEG recording, this paper found the impaired ability of interference processing in California’s deadliest wildfire (traumatic event) exposed population. This result partially complemented the previous theory of PTSD and could be a direct reason for the social dysfunction and the decreased life quality of the related population. The neural results (ERP) from EEG supported this idea, and provide a chance to make comparisons with other research that used executive function tasks with synchronized EEG in the same population (e.g., executive dysfunctions in PTSD).

The value of this paper is it verified the practical implications of this executive ability measure system (BrainE platform) in future clinics and research, as well as the importance of caring for and treating executive impairment in populations who suffer from the negative influence of climate changes. Some weaknesses are the insufficient clarification of why use these tasks and the underlying reasons, failing to provide a comprehensive model or theory to explain the results. The role of cognitive ability plays and its relationship with the commonly-found impaired mental health was not discussed.

Another criticism was the analysis methods used. For instance, the use of partial correlation (what factors should be controlled) and RM-ANOVA (why the main effect of the task is important in this study) in this paper should be scrutinized. Also, a key term “efficiency” was under-explained and might be inappropriately used interactively with signal detection sensitivity “d”.

Major issues:

1. Introduction section: the rationale why choosing these five tasks was discussed or not clear. Either promoting this new and convenient system to the community or getting inspired by previous studies on PTSD could be an appropriate reason and would make the idea more sense. The reasons why measuring these abilities were too broad without details. More discussion based on the results of the PTSD patients could have been added. For example, the inhibitory control function of PTSD was commonly found to be decreased, which might be an underlying reason for their impaired social function and individual well-being.

2. The d' (signal detection sensitivity) of a task is not the same as the task efficiency (product of d’ and speed). This paper did not give group comparisons of efficiency in the results, while the main significant difference was observed in d' instead of efficiency. Thus, the following use of the term efficiency (in correlation test and discussion) should be reclarified clearly or revised.

Minor issues:

1. For the partial correlation test, the reason why use this and what factors you want to control should be specified. The controlling variables are the factors that can influence the relationship between the two variables you wish to explore. Using “controlling for exposure group” is not clear here.

2. Post-hoc analysis generally won’t be conducted without specific reasons if there are no interaction effects in RM-ANOVA. If you want to simply explore the difference in task levels rather than compared across tasks, it is better to use one-way RM-ANOVA repeatedly for each task instead of using the task as another within-subject variable (unless you regard these cognitive functions as an integrated function, e.g., global cognition).

3. Interference processing ability has been explored in PTSD or other populations with mental health disorders in previous research. Some theories comprising the relationship between anxiety and interference processing ability were proposed (e.g., https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02699939208409696). Further discussion explanation can also be given in this paper (e.g., what theory can account for this cognitive disability or if it's caused by the increased anxiety).

4. Now that there was a stable group difference in characteristics & self-reported mental health, the relationship between the questionnaire results and the task results is better to be presented. This could largely make the result interpretable at the theory or model level.

5. The correlational relationship between the impaired “efficiency” (or d’) and mental health (due to the notable group differences in mental health observed within this population) deserves explored, to give more insights and interpretation for future studies.

**********

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.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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.

Differences in Interference Processing and Frontal Brain Function with Climate Trauma from California’s Deadliest Wildfire

PCLM-D-22-00077R1

Dear Dr. Mishra,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Differences in Interference Processing and Frontal Brain Function with Climate Trauma from California’s Deadliest Wildfire' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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 climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Fanli Jia

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

***********************************************************

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

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

**********

2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn 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 (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. 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

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate 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: The authors have address all of my comments

Reviewer #2: The authors have provided detailed responses to and satisfactorily addressed all comments. I am happy for the revised manuscript to be accepted for publication.

**********

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.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********