Once and Again and Needful Things
Shawn Swinson, Brusque-Club Cook
Swinson anchors the morning and dejeuner rush at the Tastee Diner in Bethesda, Md., where the menu 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 brain; it decreases in volume equally nosotros age. This region helps the encephalon decide which tasks to focus on and when to suppress irrelevant information. Click to see a graph showing how the frontal lobe changes with crumbling. Raz, N et al. in Neurobiology of Aging hide explanation
toggle caption
Raz, North et al. in Neurobiology of Aging
Shown in ruddy, the frontal lobe houses the "executive system" of the brain; 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 data. Click to see a graph showing how the frontal lobe changes with crumbling.
Raz, N et al. in Neurobiology of Aging
The book of grey thing, or the neurons of the brain, peaks in the early years of development. Gogtay et al in PNAS hide caption
toggle caption
Gogtay et al in PNAS
The book of gray matter, or the neurons of the brain, peaks in the early on years of development.
Gogtay et al in PNAS
Don't believe the multitasking hype, scientists say. New research shows that we humans aren't every bit good as we think we are at doing several things at once. But information technology also highlights a human skill that gave us an evolutionary edge.
Equally technology allows people to do more than tasks at the same time, the myth that we can multitask has never been stronger. But researchers say it's still a myth — and they have the data to prove it.
Humans, they say, don't do lots of things simultaneously. Instead, we switch our attending from job to task extremely apace.
A case example, researchers say, is a group of people who focus not on a BlackBerry only on a blueberry — every bit in pancakes.
Diner Cook: A Task Primary
To make it every bit a brusque-order cook, y'all must be able to keep a one-half-dozen orders in your caput while cracking eggs, flipping pancakes, working the counter, and refilling coffee cups.
And at a restaurant similar the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Md., the orders come up in verbally, not on a ticket.
Chocolate scrap pancakes, scrambled with sausage, society of french fries, rye toast — they're small tasks. On a busy day, though, they add up to a tough job for Shawn Swinson.
"My first month hither, I was set up to walk out the door," he said.
Asked what it feels like when he'south in the middle of rush hour, Swinson said, "Like you lot're in an insane asylum. It'due south well-nigh unbearable."
Swinson has learned to handle the pressure level. He's an isle of at-home, even when the orders are flying. But Swinson's dominate, manager Frank Long, says very few people can go on up without losing their cool.
"Information technology'due south singularly the well-nigh hard job in this blazon of performance," Long said. "Iv cooks. Five waitresses. Omnibus staff. Host. Getting them in and out."
Speed and accurateness are at a premium — peculiarly when the customers are multitasking, likewise. Lunchtime is the worst, Long said.
"People may take an errand to run. Maybe go to the bank and pick up dry cleaning, and consume. All within an hour, whatever time they have."
Information technology's all role of life these days. We answer east-mails while yapping on the phone. We schedule appointments while driving and listening to the radio. And information technology seems every bit if we're focusing on all these tasks simultaneously, equally if we've get true masters of doing 10 things at in one case.
Merely, brain researchers say, that's non really the example.
Multitasking: A Man Delusion?
"People tin'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 adept at deluding itself."
Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most office, we simply can't focus on more than i matter at a time.
What nosotros can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.
"Switching from task to task, you lot think y'all're actually paying attention to everything around you at the aforementioned time. Merely you're really not," Miller said.
"Y'all're not paying attention to 1 or two things simultaneously, only switching between them very quickly."
Miller said there are several reasons the brain has to switch among tasks. I is that similar tasks compete to use the aforementioned part of the brain.
"Think nearly writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same fourth dimension. Those things are nearly incommunicable to do at the aforementioned fourth dimension," he said.
"Y'all cannot focus on one while doing the other. That's because of what's called interference between the two tasks," Miller said. "They both involve communicating via speech or the written word, and and so in that location's a lot of conflict between the two of them."
Researchers say they tin can actually see the brain struggling. And at present they're trying to figure out the details of what'south going on.
Putting The Mind To The Exam
At a lab at the Academy of Michigan, researchers are using an MRI scanner to photograph test subjects' brains as they take on different tasks.
During a recent exam, Daniel Weissman, the neuroscientist in accuse 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 ii digits are one color — say, ruby — the subject decides which digit is numerically larger," Weissman said. "On the other hand, if the digits are a dissimilar colour — say green — and so the subject field decides which digit is actually printed in a larger font size."
The tests can be tricky — which is the point. After an effort, the technician told the test subject field, "OK, practise the same thing, except try to go faster this time."
MRI studies similar this i, Weissman said, have shown that when the homo in the scanner sees dark-green, his brain has to intermission earlier responding — to circular upwards all the data it has nigh the greenish task.
When the homo sees blood-red, his encephalon pauses again — to push bated information almost the light-green job and replace it with information well-nigh the red task.
If the tasks were simpler, they might non require this sort of total-throttle switching. Just, Weissman said, even simple tasks can overwhelm the brain when nosotros try to practise several at once.
"If I'one thousand out on a street corner and I'grand looking for one friend who'south wearing a ruddy scarf, I might be able to choice out that friend," Weissman said.
"But if I'm looking for a friend who'southward wearing a red scarf on i street corner, and in the heart of the street I'g looking for another friend who's wearing a blueish 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 dissever my attending and then much, and I begin to have trouble."
So the brain starts switching. Scan for red. Switch. Scan for blue. Switch. Scan for greenish. Switch.
The part of the brain that does this is called the "executive organization." It'southward a bit similar one of those cartoon conductors telling the orchestra: louder, softer, faster, slower. You come in here. You lot exist placidity for a few measures.
The usher in our heads lives in the encephalon'due south frontal lobes, basically in a higher place our eyes.
"Executive processes allow united states of america to brand plans for our future behaviors," Weissman said. "They permit us to exert some sort of voluntary control over our behavior."
The executive arrangement as well helps us achieve a goal by ignoring distractions.
"For instance, if we're performing a task where we want to lookout man Goggle box and ignore voices that are coming from, say, our children nearby," Weissman said, "our frontal region encephalon may configure the encephalon to prioritize visual data and dampen downward auditory information."
And the brain'southward executive will keep u.s. in that mode until we hear, say, ane of our children screaming.
"These are the things that brand us the most man," Weissman said. "We are non similar jellyfish — it's not similar when you poke us, nosotros always do the same thing."
A Office In Development
Humans are also not similar cats, or dogs, or fifty-fifty apes, when information technology comes to controlling how our brain responds, and what information technology responds to. Weissman says this skill probably evolved to help humans — who are pretty vulnerable, physically — to practice things like hunt animals that are bigger and stronger.
"As hunters, you know, people had to chase something, and proceed track of where their friends were," Weissman said. "You've got to think about, 'What is that tiger going to do?' y'all know, and, 'I've got my group of friends' — and surroundings the tiger."
Weissman says that keeping track of all those things wouldn't be possible without the executive system in our frontal lobes.
Still, Weissman said, "There are lots of animals in the earth that hunt without these increased abilities. So I wouldn't say that to hunt you have to take a lot of frontal development.
"But on the other hand, it helps. That's why humans have become dominant on the planet."
Dominant — and, perhaps, also confident in our ain skill. Studies show that we frequently overestimate our ability to handle multiple tasks.
For early on humans, that sort of miscalculation could have meant condign a tiger's dejeuner. These days, the consequences are more likely to exist stress, a corrigendum — or maybe a car crash.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2008/10/02/95256794/think-youre-multitasking-think-again
0 Response to "Once and Again and Needful Things"
Post a Comment