Never too much—the benefit of talent to team performance in the National Basketball Association: Comment on Swaab, Schaerer, Anicich, Ronay, and Galinsky (2014)

As long ago as the 4th century BCE, Aristotle (~350 BCE/1999) claimed that moderate amounts of qualities, rather than an abundance thereof, are needed for success. Indeed, there are a number of too-much-of-a-good-thing (TMGT) phenomena in psychology in which generally positive traits start to exert negative influence after a certain point (for reviews, see Grant & Schwartz, 2011; Pierce & Aguinis, 2013; for a general framework, see Busse, Mahlendorf, & Bode, 2016). Swaab, Schaerer, Anicich, Ronay, and Galinsky (2014) demonstrated such a phenomenon in team sports: Having more talented team members leads to better team performance up to a certain point, after which talent becomes “too much” and detrimental to performance. This too-much-talent (TMT) effect was present in basketball and soccer, professional team sports with high coordination requirements, presumably because status conflicts among highly skilled members impair coordination in teams. The TMT effect was absent in baseball, in which these requirements are lower. Here, we reexamine the TMT effect in basketball, the only domain in which the TMT effect has been shown,1 using the same data set as in the original study as well as a much larger data set. We demonstrate that Swaab et al.’s evidence of TMT is based on an inappropriate approach to testing the inverse-U-shaped relation. The results demonstrate that the common belief among laypeople (Swaab et al., 2014 Study 1) is actually correct—teams generally benefit from more talented members although the benefits decrease marginally. We did not observe any case in which increased talent was detrimental to team success

Editorial: Neural implementation of expertise

How the brain enables humans to reach an outstanding level of performance typical of expertise is of great interest to cognitive neuroscience, as demonstrated by the number and diversity of the articles in this Research Topic (RT). The RT presents a collection of 23 articles written by 80 authors on traditional expertise topics such as sport, board games, and music, but also on the expertise aspects of everyday skills, such as language and the perception of faces and objects. Just as the topics in the RT are diverse, so are the neuroimaging techniques employed and the article formats. Here we will briefly summarize the articles published in the RT

Visual search in ecological and non-ecological displays: Evidence for a non-monotonic effect of complexity on performance

Copyright @ 2013 PLoSThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Considerable research has been carried out on visual search, with single or multiple targets. However, most studies have used artificial stimuli with low ecological validity. In addition, little is known about the effects of target complexity and expertise in visual search. Here, we investigate visual search in three conditions of complexity (detecting a king, detecting a check, and detecting a checkmate) with chess players of two levels of expertise (novices and club players). Results show that the influence of target complexity depends on level of structure of the visual display. Different functional relationships were found between artificial (random chess positions) and ecologically valid (game positions) stimuli: With artificial, but not with ecologically valid stimuli, a “pop out” effect was present when a target was visually more complex than distractors but could be captured by a memory chunk. This suggests that caution should be exercised when generalising from experiments using artificial stimuli with low ecological validity to real-life stimuli.This study is funded by Brunel University and the article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund

Effective connectivity reveals strategy differences in an expert calculator

Mathematical reasoning is a core component of cognition and the study of experts defines the upper limits of human cognitive abilities, which is why we are fascinated by peak performers, such as chess masters and mental calculators. Here, we investigated the neural bases of calendrical skills, i.e. the ability to rapidly identify the weekday of a particular date, in a gifted mental calculator who does not fall in the autistic spectrum, using functional MRI. Graph-based mapping of effective connectivity, but not univariate analysis, revealed distinct anatomical location of “cortical hubs” supporting the processing of well-practiced close dates and less-practiced remote dates: the former engaged predominantly occipital and medial temporal areas, whereas the latter were associated mainly with prefrontal, orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate connectivity. These results point to the effect of extensive practice on the development of expertise and long term working memory, and demonstrate the role of frontal networks in supporting performance on less practiced calculations, which incur additional processing demands. Through the example of calendrical skills, our results demonstrate that the ability to perform complex calculations is initially supported by extensive attentional and strategic resources, which, as expertise develops, are gradually replaced by access to long term working memory for familiar material

Rapid contextualization of fragmented scene information in the human visual system

Real-world environments are extremely rich in visual information. At any given moment in time, only a fraction of this information is available to the eyes and the brain, rendering naturalistic vision a collection of incomplete snapshots. Previous research suggests that in order to successfully contextualize this fragmented information, the visual system sorts inputs according to spatial schemata, that is knowledge about the typical composition of the visual world. Here, we used a large set of 840 different natural scene fragments to investigate whether this sorting mechanism can operate across the diverse visual environments encountered during real-world vision. We recorded brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while participants viewed incomplete scene fragments at fixation. Using representational similarity analysis on the EEG data, we tracked the fragments' cortical representations across time. We found that the fragments' typical vertical location within the environment (top or bottom) predicted their cortical representations, indexing a sorting of information according to spatial schemata. The fragments' cortical representations were most strongly organized by their vertical location at around 200ms after image onset, suggesting rapid perceptual sorting of information according to spatial schemata. In control analyses, we show that this sorting is flexible with respect to visual features: it is neither explained by commonalities between visually similar indoor and outdoor scenes, nor by the feature organization emerging from a deep neural network trained on scene categorization. Demonstrating such a flexible sorting across a wide range of visually diverse scenes suggests a contextualization mechanism suitable for complex and variable real-world environments

A NOVEL APPLICATION OF MACHINE LEARNING METHODS TO MODEL MICROCONTROLLER UPSET DUE TO INTENTIONAL ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE

A novel application of support vector machines (SVMs), artificial neural networks (ANNs), and Gaussian processes (GPs) for machine learning (GPML) to model microcontroller unit (MCU) upset due to intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI) is presented. In this approach, an MCU performs a counting operation (0-7) while electromagnetic interference in the form of a radio frequency (RF) pulse is direct-injected into the MCU clock line. Injection times with respect to the clock signal are the clock low, clock rising edge, clock high, and the clock falling edge periods in the clock window during which the MCU is performing initialization and executing the counting procedure. The intent is to cause disruption in the counting operation and model the probability of effect (PoE) using machine learning tools. Five experiments were executed as part of this research, each of which contained a set of 38,300 training points and 38,300 test points, for a total of 383,000 total points with the following experiment variables: injection times with respect to the clock signal, injected RF power, injected RF pulse width, and injected RF frequency. For the 191,500 training points, the average training error was 12.47%, while for the 191,500 test points the average test error was 14.85%, meaning that on average, the machine was able to predict MCU upset with an 85.15% accuracy. Leaving out the results for the worst-performing model (SVM with a linear kernel), the test prediction accuracy for the remaining machines is almost 89%. All three machine learning methods (ANNs, SVMs, and GPML) showed excellent and consistent results in their ability to model and predict the PoE on an MCU due to IEMI. The GP approach performed best during training with a 7.43% average training error, while the ANN technique was most accurate during the test with a 10.80% error

Identification of non HLA antigens targeted by alloreactive antibodies in patients undergoing chronic haemodialysis

Die renale Transplantation ist die einzige Behandlungsform für die Mehrheit der Dialysepatienten. Die Einführung der modernen Immunsuppressions-Medikamente ermöglichte eine Reduktion der Zahl und der Häufigkeit der akuten Abstoßungs-Reaktionen. Dieser Effekt ist bei der chronischer Abstoßung aber deutlich geringer. Es ist bewiesen, dass alloreaktive Antikörper im Serum der Empfänger vor der Transplantation mit der Häufigkeit der chronischen Abstoßung korrelieren. In den letzten Jahren wurde bekannt, dass non HLA Antigene ein häufiges Ziel der Alloantikörpererkennung sind. Die Identität dieser non HLA-Antigene ist unbekannt. Das Ziel dieser Studie war Identifizierung der non HLA Antigene, die durch alloreaktive Antikörper der Hämodialyse Patienten erkannt wurden. Als erstes wurde eine Methode (Fluoreszenz Western Blot) entwickelt. Durch die Anwendung dieser Methode konnten die von 28 Patientensera am häufigsten erkannten non HLA Antigene in lymphozytären Extrakten von 20 Gesunden bestimmt werden. Die meisten Patientensera erkannten eine Gruppe von fünf Proteinen. Die zwei dimensionale Western-Blot-Analyse (2D-WB) mit anschließender Massenspektrometrie identifizierte diese Proteine als Tubulin beta chain, Vimentin, Lamin-B1 und Rho GDP-dissociation inhibitor 2. Eine detaillierte Analyse der Vimentinexpression ergab, dass die 60 kDa Vimentinisoform in Patienten- Lymphozyten im Vergleich zu den Gesunden schwächer expremiert ist. Im nächsten Teil dieser Arbeit wurde analysiert ob Vimentin unter bestimmten Bedingungen auf der Zelloberfläche expremiert wird. Dazu wurden Concanvalin-A-aktivierte Lymphozyten aus Gesunden als allogenes Zellmodell verwendet. Es stellte es sich heraus, dass Concanvalin-A-aktivierte Lymphozyten auf der Zelloberfläche eine 49 kDa Vimentinisoform expremieren, die von Patientensera erkannt wird. Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie könnten eine Basis für die Verbesserung der Spender und Empfänger-Kompatibilität und ein besseres Verständnis der non HLA Antigene in der Transplantation bieten.Renal transplantation is the only form of treatment for most haemodialysis patients with end stage renal failure. The introduction of modern immunosuppressive drugs have reduced the number and severity of acute rejection episodes, their effects on chronic allograft rejection are less obvious. There is emerging evidence that the presence of alloreactive antibodies in the serum of the recipient prior to transplantation is associated with higher incidence of chronic allograft rejection. In the last years it was recognized that non HLA antigens could be a potential target of allorecognition. However, the identity of non-HLA antigens is largely unknown. The aim of this PhD-Thesis was Identification of non HLA antigens targeted by allo-reactive antibodies in patients undergoing chronic haemodialysis. First a technology (fluorescence based Western blotting) to analyse non HLA antigens was developed. Using this method to determine the most common non-HLA antigen, lymphocytic extracts from 20 healthy volunteers were tested with sera of 28 patients on the transplantation waiting list. In spite of considerable inter-individual variation there was a group of five proteins which was recognised by most sera. Two-dimensional Western blotting experiments (2 D-WB) followed by mass spectrometry identified the antigens as tubulin beta chain, vimentin, lamin-B1 and Rho GDP-dissociation inhibitor 2. A detailed analysis of vimentin expression revealed that the antigenic 60 kDa isoform is underrepresented in patient`s lymphocytes in comparison to those of healthy volunteers. However, it is still unclear whether antibodies against Vimentin can bind to intact cells. In the next set of experiments of this work vimentin cell surface expression was investigated under special conditions. Therefore concanvalin A activated lymphocytes from healthy volunteers were used as a model for allogeneic cells. Con A activated lymphocytes express an specific 49 kDa vimentin isoform on the cell surface which is recognised by patient's sera. These results could provide a basis for future improvement of donor-recipient matching and for understanding of the role of non HLA specific antibodies in transplantation.von Senada BilalicAbweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des VerfassersZsfassung in dt. SpracheWien, Univ. für Bodenkultur, Diss., 2010OeBB(VLID)193070

How intellectual is chess? -- a reply to Howard.

Howard's (2005) claim that male dominance in chess is 'consistent with the evolutionary psychology view that males predominate at high achievement levels at least partly because of ability differences' (p. 378) is based on the premise that top level chess skill depends on a high level of IQ and visuospatial abilities. This premise is not supported by empirical evidence. In 1927 Djakow et al. first showed that world-class chess players do not have exceptional intellectual abilities. This finding has subsequently been confirmed many times. Different participation rates, or differences in the amount of practice, motivation and interest for chess in male and female chess players, may provide a better explanation for gender differences in chess performance