What enables the brain to multi-task?

Multi-tasking is a bit of a contradiction in terms, as new research suggests the brain struggles to do more than two things at a time. A study by researchers in the US published last year showed that people who think they can, say, email, listen to music and talk at the same time (such as your average teenager) are fooling themselves: the brain struggles with so many conscious activities.

The findings of a study published by French scientists earlier this year involving brain scans of volunteers suggests the reason might lie in the brain’s architecture. When presented with two tasks, each half of the brain takes its share of the load. But given three tasks, the brain struggles to ‘divide and conquer’ in this way, and produces unreliable results.

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