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Washington, July 17 (ANI):
Training and practice can significantly improve our ability to multitask, say
researchers.

“We found that a key
limitation to efficient multitasking is the speed with which our prefrontal
cortex processes information, and that this speed can be drastically increased
through training and practice,” said Paul E. Dux, a former research fellow at Vanderbilt,
and now a faculty member at the University of Queensland in Brisbane,
Australia, and co-author of the study.

The researchers found that
with training, the ‘thinking’ regions of the brain become very fast at doing
each task, thereby quickly freeing them up to take on other tasks.

To reach the conclusion,
the researchers trained seven people daily for two weeks on two simple tasks -
selecting an appropriate finger response to different images, and selecting an
appropriate vocal response (syllables) to the presentation of different sounds.
The tasks were done either separately or together (multitasking situation).

They also scanned the
individuals’ brains three times over the two weeks using functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) while they were performing the tasks.

Before practice, the
participants showed strong dual-task interference-slowing down of one or both
tasks when they attempted to perform them together.

However with practice and
training, the individuals became very quick not only at doing each of the two
tasks separately, but also at doing them together. In other words, they became
very efficient multitaskers.

“Our results imply
that the fundamental reason we are lousy multitaskers is because our brains
process each task slowly, creating a bottleneck at the central stage of
decision making,” said Rene Marois, associate professor of psychology at
Vanderbilt University and co-author of the study.

“Practice enables our
brain to process each task more quickly through this bottleneck, speeding up
performance overall.

“Our findings also
suggest that, even after extensive practice, our brain does not really do two
tasks at once. It is still processing one task at a time, but it does it so
fast it gives us the illusion we are doing two tasks simultaneously,” she
added.

The findings are published
in journal Neuron. (ANI)