( aid. Neural activity seemed to be...)Neural bottleneck found that thwarts multi-tasking

"Neural activity seemed to be delayed for the second task when the two tasks were presented nearly simultaneously ?within 300 milliseconds of each other," Marois said. "If individuals have a second or more between tasks, we did not see this delay.

"This temporal delay is the essence of dual-task interference for tasks that require actions. By using time-resolved fMRI, we can see its signature in the brain," he continued. "These findings allow us to really now focus on this set of brain areas and to understand why these areas cannot process two tasks at once."

The researchers are interested in further exploring what is happening in the bottleneck to slow performance and believe the work may have future implications for people performing complex tasks.

"It may be possible to look to the sort of tasks people are going to have to do in a very complex environment, such as flying a plane, and find out under what circumstances these tasks may be less vulnerable to dual-task interference," Dux added.

For the record, neither Marois nor Dux use their cell phones while driving.

"I'm Australian, and it's illegal there, so I'm trained not to," Dux said. "Even so, I would never do it. Dual-task costs can be up to a second, and that's a long time when you're traveling at 60 miles per hour."
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Source:Vanderbilt University