Three simultaneous actions? You want and you can't

2010/05/01 Aulestiarte Lete, Izaro - Elhuyar Zientziaren Komunikazioa

• Anatomia/Fisiologia
• Medikuntza

Researchers from Paris have studied what happens in our brain when we want to perform different actions at the same time. (Photo: DigitalBob8).

We can drive and talk at the same time, but at that time we will not be able to manipulate the GPS. We also have the ability to talk on the phone when we are cooking, but not to read the newspaper at the time. All this has its explanation: the brain cannot concentrate properly on all tasks.

With the aim of knowing what happens in our brain in this type of situation, researchers from the National Institute of Medical Research and Health of Paris have carried out an exhaustive research, the results of which have been recently communicated by the journal Science. They have explained that we can understand this inability as a “manufacturing defect” of their own and difficult to correct.

To reach this conclusion, the team of researchers has observed the brain activity of 32 volunteers with good health through MRI. They were asked to do an exercise related to word creation and scientists focused on the cerebral cortex.

We can have so many difficulties when deciding what we want to use between the arches. The choice between two elements is much simpler, with no risk of “blocking”.

D. Sharon Pruitt

When the volunteers did only one action, they saw that the frontal lobe of the brain was responsible for this activity. Specifically, the areas of the two cerebral hemispheres were concentrated on the task to achieve the goal well. However, by performing two simultaneous tasks, the lobes divided the tasks and associated each brain hemisphere with one of them. In the people on the right, the left hemisphere was related to the main and the right to the second.

However, the study found that this “division” of the brain is not total. Precisely because a specific area is pending to coordinate the distribution of tasks to be performed.

The more opportunities, the more lost

To go beyond research, volunteers had to conduct a third simultaneous activity. And none of the sixteen people could fulfill all three tasks perfectly. What happened? They had to suspend one of the two initial actions in order to concentrate on that third.

Frontal brain function is limited to two goals at the same time. If you want to achieve real success in activities, but better focus on a single task.

Chris Corwin