Here You Are Again and You Think That

Shawn Swinson, Short-Gild Melt

Swinson anchors the morning and tiffin rush at the Tastee Diner in Bethesda, Md., where the bill of fare ranges from pancakes to burgers. And note the lack of tickets: All orders are placed verbally.

Shown in red, the frontal lobe houses the "executive system" of the encephalon; it decreases in volume as nosotros age. This region helps the brain decide which tasks to focus on and when to suppress irrelevant information. Click to see a graph showing how the frontal lobe changes with aging. Raz, Due north et al. in Neurobiology of Crumbling hide caption

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Raz, N et al. in Neurobiology of Aging

Shown in ruby, the frontal lobe houses the "executive system" of the encephalon; information technology decreases in volume as nosotros historic period. This region helps the brain decide which tasks to focus on and when to suppress irrelevant information. Click to encounter a graph showing how the frontal lobe changes with aging.

Raz, N et al. in Neurobiology of Aging

The volume of gray matter, or the neurons of the brain, peaks in the early years of development. Gogtay et al in PNAS hide caption

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Gogtay et al in PNAS

The volume of gray affair, or the neurons of the brain, peaks in the early years of development.

Gogtay et al in PNAS

Don't believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New inquiry shows that we humans aren't as good as we think nosotros are at doing several things at once. Only it as well highlights a human skill that gave the states an evolutionary edge.

Every bit technology allows people to do more tasks at the same fourth dimension, the myth that we tin multitask has never been stronger. Only researchers say it's still a myth — and they have the data to bear witness it.

Humans, they say, don't do lots of things simultaneously. Instead, we switch our attending from chore to job extremely speedily.

A instance example, researchers say, is a grouping of people who focus not on a BlackBerry simply on a blueberry — as in pancakes.

Diner Cook: A Task Primary

To go far as a brusque-order cook, you must be able to keep a vi orders in your head while cracking eggs, flipping pancakes, working the counter, and refilling coffee cups.

And at a restaurant like the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Md., the orders come in verbally, not on a ticket.

Chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled with sausage, order of french fries, rye toast — they're pocket-size tasks. On a busy day, though, they add up to a tough chore for Shawn Swinson.

"My offset month here, I was ready to walk out the door," he said.

Asked what it feels like when he'southward in the eye of rush 60 minutes, Swinson said, "Like you lot're in an insane aviary. It'south almost unbearable."

Swinson has learned to handle the pressure level. He's an island of calm, fifty-fifty when the orders are flying. Simply Swinson's boss, managing director Frank Long, says very few people can keep up without losing their cool.

"Information technology'southward singularly the near difficult task in this type of operation," Long said. "Iv cooks. 5 waitresses. Charabanc staff. Host. Getting them in and out."

Speed and accurateness are at a premium — specially when the customers are multitasking, likewise. Lunchtime is the worst, Long said.

"People may have an errand to run. Maybe become to the bank and pick up dry cleaning, and eat. All inside an hr, whatever time they accept."

It's all office of life these days. Nosotros respond e-mails while yapping on the phone. Nosotros schedule appointments while driving and listening to the radio. And information technology seems as if nosotros're focusing on all these tasks simultaneously, as if we've become true masters of doing x things at once.

Just, encephalon researchers say, that'south not really the case.

Multitasking: A Homo Delusion?

"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very skillful at deluding itself."

Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the virtually office, we simply can't focus on more than than one thing at a time.

What nosotros can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with amazing speed.

"Switching from job to task, you think you lot're actually paying attention to everything effectually y'all at the aforementioned time. But you're actually not," Miller said.

"You lot're not paying attention to ane or ii things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly."

Miller said there are several reasons the brain has to switch among tasks. 1 is that similar tasks compete to use the aforementioned part of the brain.

"Call up about writing an e-mail and talking on the telephone at the same time. Those things are virtually impossible to do at the same time," he said.

"Yous cannot focus on i while doing the other. That's considering of what's called interference between the two tasks," Miller said. "They both involve communicating via speech or the written give-and-take, then in that location'southward a lot of conflict between the two of them."

Researchers say they tin actually see the brain struggling. And now they're trying to effigy out the details of what'south going on.

Putting The Mind To The Examination

At a lab at the University of Michigan, researchers are using an MRI scanner to photograph test subjects' brains as they take on different tasks.

During a recent test, Daniel Weissman, the neuroscientist in charge of the experiment, explained that a man lying inside the scanner would be performing unlike tasks, depending on the color of ii numbers he sees on a screen.

"If the two digits are one color — say, red — the subject decides which digit is numerically larger," Weissman said. "On the other hand, if the digits are a different color — say light-green — and so the subject decides which digit is actually printed in a larger font size."

The tests tin be tricky — which is the signal. After an try, the technician told the exam subject, "OK, do the same thing, except effort to go faster this fourth dimension."

MRI studies similar this ane, Weissman said, take shown that when the human in the scanner sees dark-green, his brain has to pause before responding — to circular up all the information it has about the green job.

When the man sees red, his encephalon pauses again — to push aside information near the green task and replace information technology with data about the ruddy task.

If the tasks were simpler, they might not require this sort of total-throttle switching. Just, Weissman said, even simple tasks can overwhelm the brain when we try to do several at in one case.

"If I'k out on a street corner and I'm looking for 1 friend who'southward wearing a red scarf, I might be able to selection out that friend," Weissman said.

"But if I'm looking for a friend who'south wearing a ruby scarf on ane street corner, and in the middle of the street I'thou looking for another friend who's wearing a blue scarf — and on the other side of the street I'm looking for a friend wearing a dark-green scarf — at some point, I can only divide my attention then much, and I begin to have trouble."

And then the brain starts switching. Scan for red. Switch. Scan for blue. Switch. Scan for light-green. Switch.

The part of the brain that does this is called the "executive system." It'southward a chip like i of those cartoon conductors telling the orchestra: louder, softer, faster, slower. You lot come in here. Y'all be placidity for a few measures.

The conductor in our heads lives in the brain'due south frontal lobes, basically in a higher place our eyes.

"Executive processes let us to brand plans for our futurity behaviors," Weissman said. "They permit u.s. to exert some sort of voluntary control over our behavior."

The executive system also helps us achieve a goal by ignoring distractions.

"For example, if we're performing a task where we want to watch Tv set and ignore voices that are coming from, say, our children nearby," Weissman said, "our frontal region encephalon may configure the encephalon to prioritize visual information and dampen downwards auditory data."

And the brain's executive will keep usa in that way until we hear, say, 1 of our children screaming.

"These are the things that make us the most human," Weissman said. "We are not like jellyfish — it'southward not like when you poke u.s., we always practise the same thing."

A Role In Evolution

Humans are also non like cats, or dogs, or even apes, when it comes to decision-making how our brain responds, and what it responds to. Weissman says this skill probably evolved to help humans — who are pretty vulnerable, physically — to do things like hunt animals that are bigger and stronger.

"As hunters, you know, people had to hunt something, and keep track of where their friends were," Weissman said. "You've got to think about, 'What is that tiger going to exercise?' you know, and, 'I've got my group of friends' — and surround the tiger."

Weissman says that keeping runway of all those things wouldn't be possible without the executive system in our frontal lobes.

Yet, Weissman said, "There are lots of animals in the globe that hunt without these increased abilities. And then I wouldn't say that to chase you lot have to take a lot of frontal evolution.

"But on the other hand, it helps. That's why humans have become ascendant on the planet."

Ascendant — and, perchance, too confident in our ain skill. Studies testify that we frequently overestimate our ability to handle multiple tasks.

For early on humans, that sort of miscalculation could take meant condign a tiger's lunch. These days, the consequences are more than probable to be stress, a corrigendum — or perchance a automobile crash.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2008/10/02/95256794/think-youre-multitasking-think-again

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