Divide and conquer seems to be the maxim of our brain when we try to multitask. According to a study carried out by scientists at the Ecole Noramle Superieure in Paris (France) and published today by the journal Science , when we multitask, each half of our brain deals with a different matter . That would explain why we can get along relatively well without watching television while reading a magazine, but things get complicated if we try to have a conversation simultaneously.
To reach this conclusion, Sylvain Charron and Etienne Koechlin used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of 32 volunteers as they performed one, two, and three tasks at a time. When they were concentrating on a single activity, both halves of an area known as the anterior cingulate and the premotor cortex were active. However, when applied to two simultaneous tasks, the activity of the left cerebral hemisphere was related to the main task, and that of the right to the secondary one. The authors assure that the function of the frontal area of the brain , linked to reasoning and decision-making, is limited to performing a maximum of two tasks at the same time .
