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Business News/ Opinion / Columns/  Neeraj Jain & V. Rema | The art of multitasking
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Neeraj Jain & V. Rema | The art of multitasking

Why are some people good at multitasking, while others get hassled?

Scientists define multitasking as doing multiple things simultaneously without compromising the quality and efficiency of any of the tasks. Photo: iStockPremium
Scientists define multitasking as doing multiple things simultaneously without compromising the quality and efficiency of any of the tasks. Photo: iStock

Every morning a woman executive who is juggling demands of school uniforms, lunch packs, water bottles and lost homework while giving instructions to the housemaid and planning strategies in her head to deal with work-related deadlines is efficiently multitasking. We all have felt frustrated because somebody is driving slowly in the right lane while talking on a mobile phone. Clearly we are not good at simultaneously talking on the phone and driving safely. These two jobs are hard to multitask. But driving itself is multitasking—eyes scanning for traffic, pedestrians, cyclists, autorickshaws, cows and pigs, constant adjustment of speed by manipulating clutch, brake and accelerator with feet, and steering and changing gears with the hands. How do we get really good at it?

Scientists define multitasking as doing multiple things simultaneously without compromising the quality and efficiency of any of the tasks. Why are we good at multitasking some jobs and not others? Why are some people good at multitasking, while others get hassled?

When we multitask, our brain has to deal with processing multiple sensory inputs, juggle many thoughts and give multiple responses. Neuroscientists have tried to understand how the brain handles multitasking. Does the brain actually process and respond to multiple streams of information simultaneously, or does it simply divide tasks into small chunks and attend to them alternately in rapid succession so that it appears to be doing all of them at once? Cells that make up our brain, called neurons, are connected in a single, vast and exceedingly complex information-processing network. Within this network there are separate circuits for different functions. Is there a region in the brain responsible for multitasking?

A simple experiment to study how the brain deals with competing information is by showing two different objects to the two eyes at the same time. Normally our eyes look at the same object with slightly different angles (which gives us depth perception, and is exploited in 3D movies). When two different objects or images are shown to the eyes simultaneously, it results in binocular rivalry, described as early as 16th century by Giambattista della Porta of Naples, Italy. Faced with binocular rivalry, the brain at any time is aware of only one image while the other is suppressed. People will report seeing two images alternately, switching rapidly. Further evidence favouring sequential processing comes from a study by Renè Marois at Vanderbilt University in the US. Individuals were trained to multitask for two weeks. By monitoring brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging before training it was found that during efficient multitasking, the speed of sequential processing was so rapid that it appeared as if the brain was processing multiple streams of information simultaneously.

Nikos K. Logothetis and co-workers, then at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, studied competition between visual and auditory signals and suggested the competition between alternate perceptual interpretations happens in a part of the brain where higher-level information analysis takes place. Called executive domains of multitasking, these circuits are present in the frontmost part of the brain, which neuroscientists call the prefrontal cortex. Interestingly, Adam Messinger and co-workers, working at the National Institutes of Health, the US, found a population of neurons in the prefrontal cortex that responds to a multitask requiring visual attention and memory. These multitasking neurons had stronger responses to both the tasks performed simultaneously than to any of the tasks separately. They suggest that these multitasking neurons can contribute towards improving encoding of both the tasks. They can provide a computational advantage for behaviours that place simultaneous demands on two or more cognitive processes.

From scientific literature we know that the effectiveness of multitasking is influenced by many factors such as (i) number of tasks to be processed or the cognitive load, (ii) type or nature of the tasks, (iii) familiarity with the task, (iv) attentiveness, and (v) age. Training for multitasking reduces multitask interference and increases familiarity of the tasks. This allows for less time for processing information since less attention is then required for performing multiple tasks. The increase in efficiency of multitasking with training could be due to changes in neuronal pathways. Japanese neuroscientist Hikaru Takeuchi and co-workers found that multitasking training increased grey matter volume in the prefrontal cortex. There is a decrease in cognitive load with practice, due to modification of slow processing networks to efficient task-specific automatic processing brain circuits.

For sequential attention to multiple tasks during multitasking one bottleneck is working memory, a memory space that brain uses for short-term storage. Working memory can hold only a few items at a time. But what constitutes an item is flexible. While learning to drive, each action—steering, pressing clutch, changing gears—is a separate task requiring full attention. With practice, changing gears and pressing the clutch becomes a single task. Thus many tasks can combine to become a single task, occupying only one slot in the working memory, freeing it up for other items. Familiarity with recurring patterns allows experienced executives to answer a phone call and read an email while attending to an employee. Experience trains them to pick out unusual or abnormal patterns in the flow of information on which attention is focused, halting everything else momentarily. This is also why multitasking has to be set aside for resolving a novel situation, which requires full attention in a focused brainstorming session.

Neeraj Jain is a professor and scientist, and V. Rema is consulting scientist
at the National Brain Research Centre, Gurgaon.

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Published: 09 Mar 2015, 05:28 PM IST
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