Brain Research Can You Only Do 2 Things Simultaneously?

Brain Research: Can We Only Do Two Things Simultaneously? French brain researchers have found in a study with brain scans that the human brain apparently can not work on more than two activities simultaneously. They attribute this to the fact that we do not have more than two halves of the brain.

(19.04.2010) French brain researchers have found in a study with brain scans that the human brain apparently can not work on more than two activities at the same time. They attribute this to the fact that we do not have more than two halves of the brain.Researchers Etienne Koechlin and Sylvain Charron of the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSeRM) gave 32 subjects the task of sorting letters into words that were accidentally interrupted by a second activity. For this purpose, a solution was rewarded differently.

Koechlin, the director of the INSeRM, Charron and colleagues, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the locations in their brains where the subjects' targets for action were activated. For individual tasks, the French scientists found that both brain hemispheres were active. With an additional secondary target, they could observe that the brain completed the task in both halves of the brain. In this case, the solution of the first task in the left hemisphere and the execution of the second task in the right hemisphere was operated. The better the solution, the better the solution. The processing of information was also distributed to both halves.

If the subjects were given a third task and then returned to the first task in the middle of the day, the Paris neurologists observed the subjects failing. The scientists interpret the results in such a way that the addition of a second Aufag the original half of the brain still maintains the motivation to solve. When adding the third task, this then took the place of the first one.

Maybe an old creed of naturopathy is confirmed here, according to which multitasking in the western industrial nations causes stress for the human organism, as it is not (yet) suitable for this. Looking at one or two activities seems to be optimal - everything else seems to lead to stress on the organism and quality degradation in the execution. (Thorsten Fischer, Naturopath Osteopathy)

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Picture credits: Johannes Höntsch, Pixelio.de.