C. Earl Miller, an expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied the
prefrontal cortex,
which controls the brain while a person is multitasking.
According to his studies, the size of this cortex
varies between species, He
found that for humans, the size of this part constitutes one third of the brain,
while it is only 4 to 5 percent in dogs, and about 15% in monkeys. Given that this cortex is larger on a
human, it allows a human to be more flexible and accurate in his or her multitasking. However, Miller
wanted to look further into whether the cortex was truly processing information about two different tasks
simultaneously. He designed an experiment where he presents visual stimulants to his subjects in a wax that
mimics multi-tasking. Miller then attached sensors to the patients " heads to pick up the electric patterns of
the brain. This sensor would show if " the brain particles, called neurons, were truly processing two different
tasks. What he found is that the brain neurons only lit up in singular areas one at a time, and never
simultaneously.
D. Davis Meyer, a professor of University of Michigan, studied the young adults in
a similar
experiment. He instructed them to simultaneously do math problems
and classify simple words into different
categories. For this experiment. Meyer
found that when you think you are doing several jobs at the same
time, you are
actually switching between jobs. Even though the people tried to do the tasks
at the same time,
and both tasks were eventually accomplished, overall, the
task look more time than if the person focused on
a single task one at a time.
