Abstract
While it is known that some individuals can effectively perform two tasks simultaneously, other individuals cannot. How the brain deals with performing simultaneous tasks remains unclear. In the present study, we aimed to assess which brain areas corresponded to various phenomena in task performance. Nineteen subjects were requested to sequentially perform three blocks of tasks, including two unimodal tasks and one bimodal task. The unimodal tasks measured either visual feature binding or auditory pitch comparison, while the bimodal task required performance of the two tasks simultaneously. The functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results are compatible with previous studies showing that distinct brain areas, such as the visual cortices, frontal eye field (FEF), lateral parietal lobe (BA7), and medial and inferior frontal lobe, are involved in processing of visual unimodal tasks. In addition, the temporal lobes and Brodmann area 43 (BA43) were involved in processing of auditory unimodal tasks. These results lend support to concepts of modality-specific attention. Compared to the unimodal tasks, bimodal tasks required activation of additional brain areas. Furthermore, while deactivated brain areas were related to good performance in the bimodal task, these areas were not deactivated where the subject performed well in only one of the two simultaneous tasks. These results indicate that efficient information processing does not require some brain areas to be overly active; rather, the specific brain areas need to be relatively deactivated to remain alert and perform well on two tasks simultaneously. Meanwhile, it can also offer a neural basis for biofeedback in training courses, such as courses in how to perform multiple tasks simultaneously.
Highlights
While some people excel at performing two tasks simultaneously, others can only effectively perform tasks sequentially
The results of our study showed that subjects who performed well on the bimodal tasks showed decreased brain activity in some visual, auditory and parietal lobes, compared to those who could only perform well on one of the two simultaneous tasks
Our results showing the activation of distinct brain areas for unrelated visual and auditory tasks support the concept of modal specific information processing
Summary
While some people excel at performing two tasks simultaneously, others can only effectively perform tasks sequentially. Past research has demonstrated that the performance of multiple tasks is not hindered when both tasks are executed by different modalities, such as tasks involving vision and audition [1,2,3]. These studies suggested the presence of multiple processors for each modality [4]. The observation that people cannot perform well on bimodal tasks is supported by the evidence that processing resources are shared among modalities (i.e., modality independent), and performance of bimodal/ dual tasks depends on interactions between the processing for each of the tasks [13,14,15,16,17,18]
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