If that's the case, a way to test the theory and understanding (assuming some parts of reservoir and signal channel can be reliably identified) would be to prun

If that's the case, a way to test the theory and understanding (assuming some parts of reservoir and signal channel can be reliably identified) would be to prune the high-confidence reservoir significantly reducing the model size while still getting good predictions. I don't believe the authors mention this (though I skimmed and didn't read the full paper in detail so I may be wrong)