Mastering multi-tasking

Multitasking is the useful ability to do more than one thing at once. Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Tennesee used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FRI) to look into what goes on in our brains while we multitask. They trained seven people daily for two weeks on two different tasks. In one task they had to respond with their fingers to different images and in another they had to say a syllable in response to sounds. The participants did the tasks, either seperately or together (the tasks not the participants), and were scanned while they were doing them. The study found that over the course of the two weeks, the participants became very efficient multitaskers, something due to information being processed more quickly and efficiently through the prefrontal cortex. The participants did not truly multitask; rather they became so quick at carrying out each individual task that it seemed as though they were doing both at once.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716113401.htm