Your Brain Can Rewire Itself To Allow True Multitasking (sciencealert.com) 86
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: [I]n a new study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in the U.S. have revealed that we can put certain tasks on autopilot in a way that enables something closer to true multitasking. Driving is the perfect example: When you take your test, your entire mental and physical energy is concentrated on executing the right combinations of movements and thoughts. After a decade behind the wheel, the brain is no longer consciously thinking everything through in great detail.
In the new study, the researchers found that after extensive practice, the brain can effectively reroute some tasks around the brain's main computing center -- like a bypass road around a city -- to reduce mental overload and improve multitasking capability. "We have another stepping stone in our understanding of how the brain learns," says neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber, senior author of the study. "The encouraging part is that you really can learn to multitask. There is actually a way to remodel your brain architecture and use other parts of your brain."
[...] "Previous studies have shown that parts of the temporal cortex can be activated by particular object categories in experienced observers -- birds, cars, even Pokemon -- but a limitation of all of those studies is that they only looked after people became experts," says psychologist Patrick Cox, first author of the study. "We measure before and after training, so we can see that extensive training essentially put a category-selective area in the temporal lobe that was not there before." The study culminated in a dual-task experiment, in which the participants were asked to identify cars and take on another challenge. The individuals whose brains had offloaded more car-sorting work to the temporal cortex did better at the second task.
In the new study, the researchers found that after extensive practice, the brain can effectively reroute some tasks around the brain's main computing center -- like a bypass road around a city -- to reduce mental overload and improve multitasking capability. "We have another stepping stone in our understanding of how the brain learns," says neuroscientist Maximilian Riesenhuber, senior author of the study. "The encouraging part is that you really can learn to multitask. There is actually a way to remodel your brain architecture and use other parts of your brain."
[...] "Previous studies have shown that parts of the temporal cortex can be activated by particular object categories in experienced observers -- birds, cars, even Pokemon -- but a limitation of all of those studies is that they only looked after people became experts," says psychologist Patrick Cox, first author of the study. "We measure before and after training, so we can see that extensive training essentially put a category-selective area in the temporal lobe that was not there before." The study culminated in a dual-task experiment, in which the participants were asked to identify cars and take on another challenge. The individuals whose brains had offloaded more car-sorting work to the temporal cortex did better at the second task.
It does it poorly (Score:5, Interesting)
"After a decade behind the wheel, the brain is no longer consciously thinking everything through in great detail. "
Indeed, and for some reason, signalling fell through the brain's cracks.
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Re: It does it poorly (Score:2)
Not DUI but DCI - driving for the cellphone impaired but I recently became semi-retired, which means my blinkers will be set to always on until such time that it can take verbal commands e.g. switch blinker off, dammit Siri!
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"After a decade behind the wheel, the brain is no longer consciously thinking everything through in great detail. "
Indeed, and for some reason, signalling fell through the brain's cracks.
Forget signalling. Basic driving such as not stopping one or more car lengths behind the white line, not braking at green lights, not braking going down small hills, or turning right on red.
People say senior citizens should be retested every few years. Make it everyone. The panic in people's eyes when they can't be on their phone while taking the test would be priceless.
Re: It does it poorly (Score:2)
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What's scary is the number of people who've been doing just that for CDLs
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There's no limit to how many times you can take the test.
I've known numerous people who never read the book, never learned the rules, just kept taking the tests (both written and driving) until they randomly passed.
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Basic driving such as not stopping one or more car lengths behind the white line
I'm sorry what? Where in the world is this a rule? You stop behind the white line, but up at it. That's what the line is there for. In places in the world with intelligent intersections if you stop more than a cars length behind it you don't trigger the sensor and may find yourself waiting for a light which will never change to green.
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You misread OP's comment. They're saying people stop a car length or more behind the white line rather than putting the nose of their car on the white line, and could they not do that.
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You misread OP's comment. They're saying people stop a car length or more behind the white line rather than putting the nose of their car on the white line, and could they not do that.
I'm sure that was the intent, but (I think) it actually parses the other way. It's messy, so I'm not sure, but that's how I read it.
Re: It does it poorly (Score:2)
I donâ(TM)t think intelligent is the right word. There was such an intersection a street over from my house in Toronto and I would have to get off my bike, go and push the pedestrian crossing button and then get back on. Fucking annoying and whomever thought it was a good idea was clearly brain dead.
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They're not brain dead, they just don't love you.
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No, they designed it right. You are supposed to *walk your bike across the street*, not ride it across.
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"not braking going down small hills,"
Breaking while going UPhill is just as bad.
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not braking at green lights, not braking going down small hills, or turning right on red.
Hi. Maybe I'm seeing something on/near the street that you're not, or maybe I thought I heard a siren. Or perhaps I have something fragile in the car with me (more fragile than my body), and I need to be extra careful. The only thing I agree with is "not stopping one or more car lengths behind the white line" unless there's something in the road, which again, maybe you can't see because you're behind the other car.
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People say senior citizens should be retested every few years. Make it everyone.
Are you trying to make Elon Musk richer? Because this is how you make Elon Musk richer.
Re: It does it poorly (Score:2)
Where is the distance to stop behind the limit line specified?
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Practically, by the distance from the line to the vehicle sensor so that the light changes and gives you a turn to cross.
I've noticed a lot of young drivers now don't have any idea how that technology works, or that it even exists, and they're scared of getting too close to pedestrians in the crosswalk.
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Practically, by the distance from the line to the vehicle sensor so that the light changes and gives you a turn to cross.
While that is arguably sort of correct, I think it's pretty clear that we're discussing the legal requirements. Last I looked the statutes tend to just say behind the line and not how far.
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We should but only in parts of the world where car usage isn't mandatory. US suburbs, for example, are not built for or served by anything approaching adequate transit, nor are they even walkable. Those areas not only should not need repeated testing, but you shouldn't even need a license to begin with.
And if you think that's a really terrible idea, well, maybe you need to support more walkable communities with adequate transit, even if you, yourself, wouldn't use any of it.
Also note I'm not proposing not
Re: It does it poorly (Score:2)
Rural communities could deal with the problem by selective enforcement - i.e. the local sheriff chooses not to be a dick. But this seems a problem better solved with different license types.
If some states can give a junior license with restrictions on nighttime driving (w/o licensed supervision, etc) they could make it easier to get a basic license w/ road restrictions based on verified id + online test.
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Shouldn't have to, the act has very little judgement involved and the lower brains are still able to do a smidge, if it was done routinely it still should be. If.
You're genuinely going to have "I need to pick up milk" fall through the cracks though. Autopilot will take you straight home after work, not make the conscious decision to deviate on the necessary avenue or freeway exit. Soon you'll be saying Oops in the driveway.
Gamers playing against harder but routine fights (soulslikes) have frequently reporte
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I thought it was a poor headline, we rewire tasks, offload down to the lower minds after both repetition and pruning of the task, ready to escalate to conscious regard instantly should any wrinkle deviate from the pruned model. You reach for the next widget on the assembly line and it's a circle, not a triangle like the last million, whatever the humorous response it's precluded by pause and ponder.
The closest we get to multitasking with the upper brain is toggling back and forth, hotswaps, delayed tasking,
Re:It does it poorly (Score:5, Insightful)
"Driving is the perfect example"
Driving isn't even "the perfect example", walking is. How the brain works is better understood than presented here, to an embarrassing extent. We've known longer than any of us have been alive that the brain learns and no longer needs to be actively focused on skills in order to perform them. Anyone who plays a musical instrument is acutely aware of this.
Re:It does it poorly (Score:5, Informative)
iirc that's entirely the job of the Cerebellum. It monitors stimulus on the way in and responses on the way out, and when it's seen it enough it creates "shortcuts" that allow for both faster and more automatic responses.
Indeed, the first one we learn is walking. (balance without a cerebellum is very hard) There's a rare defect where the cerebellum fails to form / fully form, and those people have a really hard time living all their lives on "manual mode".
Riding a bicycle is a good extension from walking, your cerebellum gets to go back into intense learning mode all over again.
I really don't see why any of this is "news", we've known about the concept for centuries, and the mechanisms behind it for decades.
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Man, debugging stuff like that would be a bitch.
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The responses it provides are "the right responses, most of the time", so it comes with the same risks.
Like when you're working in the kitchen and swing your elbow and bump the handle of a knife and it flips off the counter and starts to fall. And you "instinctively" reach out to grab it, only just stopping yourself in time to avoid cutting your hand.
Your cerebellum said "I got this!", and it took your brain a split second longer to "countermand" the order to grab the knife. It took a little longer to pro
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Breathing, your heart beating. Driving is a better example because it's a learned behaviour that most people remember learning. They can remember having to think about it, and most have also experienced not having to think about it.
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You can consciously stop breathing for a short period of time, but you breathe, at the appropriate rate, without having to think about it. You can also have some conscious control over your heart rate, but your heart will happily beat without any connection to your brain at all, although without much rate control.
It's all completely separate. Your brain is massively parallel and physcially reconfigures itself when you learn something. It's more like an FPGA than a CPU.
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Exactly. Walking is the prime example. Sorry, did not see this when scanning the comments and posted pretty much the same thing. As a second example, speaking. I speak a lot one-sidedly (lectures) and sometimes I catch my brain trying to say nonsense that sounds good, just before it does it. Most speaking is running seconds behind your intent to say something (at least for me) and sometimes the dumb bio-automation gets it wrong. Usually it does a decent job of transcribing the non-verbal / half-verbal ideas
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It's been the basis for elite athletes practice routines for years.
Visualization is sometimes mocked by the ignorant, but even the simple act of visualizing EXACTLY what is happening, what you're doing, what moves you're making, how you're moving...all form & reinforce neural pathways, making both the action and the particular precise details easier to replicate.
I wouldn't call this multitasking, precisely, more like a training-based delegation of muscle functions and basic responses 'lower' in the cere
Re: It does it poorly (Score:2)
Playing a musical instrument while walking requires additional training. Neither of those activities is as automatic as you seem to think
You Gotta Keep Them Guessing (Score:2)
If you always signal, they always know what to expect and then they get complacent.
You've got to keep them guessing. It keeps them awake on their toes. Look how everyone pays attention when someone in the left lane stops. and then suddenly makes a 90 degree right turn. Their not even half as attentive if you give your intentions away with a signal.
https://youtu.be/hlH9RGLJqxE?s... [youtu.be]
Elephants and whales RULE the world! (Score:2)
Mod parent funny, though the version of the joke I was looking for would have involved brain size related to body mass. So my theory is that most Americans have rewired large chunks of their brains to management of their large car bodies.
Captain Obvious strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)
When you do a sport, like tennis, boxing, or whtever else -- what you've done in your training is teaching your stem brain to react and coordinate doszens of simultaneous tasks.
The thing is: it's only the neocortex that can't truly multitask.
Driving is a good example: you can do most of the tasks out of a well trained stem brain. The challenge is to not offload essential, complex decision-making tasks, requiring differentiate processing, and which therefore absolutely have to be on the neocortex -- or else people die.
This is why I don't like many driver assistance features: they draw away neocortex capacitiy, in other words: they're needlessly distracting.
Some are useful though.
Re: Captain Obvious strikes again (Score:2)
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Yes I am ok. That anonymous guy though. Someone nicked his sweets.
Re: Captain Obvious strikes again (Score:2)
Lane assist is a disaster waiting to happen.
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Re:Captain Obvious strikes again (Score:5, Interesting)
When you do a sport, like tennis, boxing, or whtever else -- what you've done in your training is teaching your stem brain to react and coordinate doszens of simultaneous tasks.
True... but only up to a point.
Each of the "automatic" background tasks you're performing does consume a bit of your overall capacity. Professions that have to deal with this explicitly because failing to manage it is dangerous call it "task loading". Take two examples: basic, automatic skills of divers and pilots.
Managing buoyancy is a skill that requires considerable practice for most novice divers. You have to regulate your breathing to maintain an average lung volume that keeps you at neutral buoyancy, not rising or falling (much) in the water column, but your breathing also has to be sufficient to supply your body's needs, and you also have to notice when your situation is changing so that you can't regulate with lung volume alone and then adjust the amount of air in your buoyancy compensation device (BCD).
New divers often find buoyancy difficult even with full attention. But with practice it becomes first easy, and then fully automatic, even when in the middle of the water column with no ready reference points. I have ~400 logged dives and I no longer even notice it, my perception is that I just "naturally" stay neutral except when I wish to rise or descend, and then it just happens. I find my hands occasionally reaching to adjust my BCD, but I don't think about it.
Pilots similarly have to learn to maintain level flight, using both direct observation out the window and instruments. It's hard and requires full attention for quite a while, but then becomes natural and automatic.
Once these skills are developed, they feel completely automatic, but they're really not, which becomes very apparent when you start piling up multiple "automatic" tasks, and possibly add a non-automatic task on top of them. As you add more "automatic" tasks, their quality degrades, and when you throw in a non-automatic task you find that both the automatic tasks are executed poorly and the non-automatic task is more difficult.
For divers, this becomes really apparent when, having mastered buoyancy, they begin trying to do other things like executing search patterns, or building or welding something, etc. Even something as simple as looking at a compass to determine heading while navigating can result in divers suddenly discovering that their "automatic" buoyancy control has disappeared and they are rising or sinking (usually rising). To some degree this can be mitigated with more practice/experience of the "automatic" skills, but it never goes away. One solution when performance of a complex skill is required (e.g. welding) is to eliminate buoyancy control as a requirement, for example by going to the bottom and adjusting the BCD so the diver is strongly negative and can't float up even with lungs filled to maximum.
Pilots address the problem by defining a strict hierarchy to three important automatic or semi-automatic skills. The phrase is "aviate, navigate, communicate", and the idea is that when task loading begins to overwhelm the pilot they focus entirely on flying the plane first, and only when they are confident they have that fully under control do they pay attention to course and heading, and only when that is fully under control do they pay attention to the radio. Of course, when not overloaded they do all three things at once, all the time, and don't really think about any of them, free to watch the scenery or whatever. But the automatic skills break under load, and when they break the pilot has to consciously "take over", and to prioritize conscious focus on the right tasks first.
Driving is another good example. It feels completely automatic... but I know firsthand that it's not. One way I know this is by what happens when I listen to audiobooks. I cannot listen to a book unless I'm doing something else. The stream of information isn't sufficiently dense to occupy my mind, so my mind wanders and then I suddenly realize that I haven't heard the last five minutes. But when I'm driving, that doesn't happen. It's clear that although driving feels automatic it does consume enough of my attention that I no longer have enough excess capacity to begin daydreaming. Driving + (good) book is close to my limit. I also find that doing non-word puzzles (e.g. Sudoku) is enough to keep my mind from wandering away from a book. Word puzzles don't work because I can't do two language-oriented tasks at the same time (some people can).
Anyway, the point is that (a) I hope there's more to this research than appears in the summary because it really does seem like it's well-understood and (b) background tasks feel completely automatic, but they're not. They still consume attention, just less, and subconciously.
The same for music (Score:5, Interesting)
Realm musicians spend a lot of time in learning the notes on the score, so their body knows how to play that piece.
At that point, the mind can fully kick-in and add the interpretation layer while the body control runs in the background.
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When dancing I don't think about the steps, but about placement. If I had to think about the steps and details in them, I wouldn't even hear the music.
My first reaction reading this was "they described what we call muscle memory..."
Drummers (Score:5, Interesting)
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I expect it is true. Apache helicopter pilots are said learn to use their eyes independently. The brain is plastic, if there is enough pressure to do so.
The question really is what is the price tag, in terms of performance impairment at other tasks.
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Because it has turned senate elections into a popularity contest they were never designed to be. We have the House for that.
The House has proportional representation by population, which gives individual constituents equal representation in our national government.
The Senate being popularly elected means if you live in a low population state you as an individual get extra representation for um reasons...
The Senate was supposed to represent the States themselves, the idea being that senators would legislate
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Because it has turned senate elections into a popularity contest they were never designed to be.
To be precise, it turned Senate elections into a different kind of popularity contest. Previously they were a popularity contest within the state legislatures, whereas the 17A made them a popularity contest within the states. Well, in some states. 29 of the 45 states used some sort of direct election of senators by the time the 17A was proposed.
An interesting (to me) footnote to the 17A is that my state, Utah, was the only one to reject it. Six states ignored it, all in the Southeast. It was ratified
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Anyone who has every tried to learn the drums can tell you humans are capable of true multitasking. Limb independence seems like an impossible feat when you first start out.
I don't know if it's still there, but the Science Center at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center in San Diego used to have a device that was a good demonstrator of this. It had four double rows of lights, with two foot pedals and two twist handles, and a counter. It would randomly light one bulb in each of the paired rows, and by manipulating the pedals and handles, you could move the lit bulb in the other of each paired row; when you got all four matching, a counter would increment and the
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Also, Bonham was AMAZING!
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This may be related, but I saw an interview with Jon Lord, now passed-on keyboardist for Deep Purple. He was classically trained which enforces a certain regimented form of playing. When he saw Jerry Lee Lewis, it made a big impression on him. It was clear to him that Jerry Lee had no classical training but he initially could not play that way. He learned how to play, what I can only describe as, free form. The classical training still "informed" his free form playing but he learned how to do it. He remarke
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The area that makes me most aware of this, musical performance. When a musician performs in a group, his mind is engaged with the group, not the skills. The body does the work, generally without the mind even being aware of it. The music comes out, how that happens seems a mystery.
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It's a bit like an AI after training. The difference is we don't need zillions of training cycles and zillions of samples to train our "AI" modules.
of course we do. Humans need about 100,000 hours of training cycles before they're really useful. Heck, they need something like 10,000 hours of training cycles before they can even confidently master bipedal locomotion.
We just think of it as "growing up".
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what?? this isnt even close to true.
its 10,000 to MASTER something.. 100,000 hours for what??
100,000 HOURS of training. [Re:Like AI training] (Score:2)
of course we do. Humans need about 100,000 hours of training cycles before they're really useful. Heck, they need something like 10,000 hours of training cycles before they can even confidently master bipedal locomotion. We just think of it as "growing up".
what?? this isnt even close to true. its 10,000 to MASTER something.. 100,000 hours for what??
Start by learning to crawl. Learning to understand English (or whatever language you grow up with. Learning to speak. Learning to stand upright. Learning to walk. Learning to read. Learning to write. Learning all the thousands of rules of society. Learning arithmetic, history, all the stuff you learn in first grade.
These take literally YEARS.
10,000 hours to master something? That's about a year and a half of waking life. Call it two years, since one year old babies sleep a lot. Show me a two year old who
Obviously (Score:4, Informative)
Walking is a prime example. Just do not expect the "background" task to do well unless everything is just as expected. As anybody that ever stubbed their toe has experienced. Brain-based automation is DUMB.
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LOL I posted the exact same thing. Walking is most obvious, when you realize that this entire topic is worthless. Mankind has known these things forever.
The fact that we can talk is remarkable, but other animals can too.
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Exactly. Some people were apparently in dire need of a publication...
Drummer (Score:1)
Something any serious jazz drummer already knows - getting syncopated rhythms going in each limb independently
Reframe Your Brain (Score:2)
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Does the book also teach you how not to fall victim to propaganda and become a hateful jerk spewing right wing misogynist propaganda?
No?
I'd be happy just to get (Score:1)
my single-tasking working smooth.
Many Tasks Require Deep Thinking (Score:2)
We call it Muscle Memory. (Score:2)
But is it really multitasking or just specialized cell groups in the brain? sort of like a GPU(before they were general purpose inference machines), network chip, or math co-processor (remember those?).
that's not multitasking (Score:2)
As the car/music/walking people show, this isn't really multitasking. True multitasking (vs task switching) would be the agility to engage in two novel cognitive tasks simultaneously. Like watching TV while studying (neither of which is a rote activity), which generally is a task-switching activity.
There's probably a whole subset also of 'Doing activity X while conversing', which does seem to be a form of multitasking most people are wired for (understanding that conversation will dip if the other task's
Brain uses macros for tasks (Score:2)
I read a similar/related article a while ago that suggested that your brain develops the equivalent of macros to execute various tasks. Do the same thing often enough in a situation and your brain builds a task to handle it. Those tasks get automatically triggered by the situation/circumstance. More informally, I guess they could be called habits. For example. when driving you do certain actions, like routinely checking your mirrors, or using your turn signals, w/o thinking about it.
Personally, I hav
Jazz musicians (Score:3)
bypass road (Score:2)
"like a bypass road around a city." Blind leading the blind.
multiple personality disorder (Score:2)
I think folks with multiple personalities or talking voices / thoughts are basically multitasking. Their brain is acting like multiple independent mini-brains.
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I've read those books as well.
But everyone has multiple personalities, they just identify them all as part of the same whole. "But but they have the same memory!" Or do we just PERCEIVE it as the same because when I stop to remember things on two different days I can sometimes recall details/events on one day I couldn't on the other and we ALL have memories which can proven to not match what cameras record, especially over time.
The only thing connecting you in one mood from you in a different mood where you
Is this really supposed to be news? (Score:2)
I have ADHD. I call this 'autopilot' and it's essentially how I handle most of life. For example, active thought about something as silly as the state of a light in a room each time I enter/exit would be MUCH too costly. I'd forget where I was going or lose my place in whatever actual significant thing I'm working on/thinking about if I did that. I program my autopilot and reflexively turn the light on every time I enter and exit... at first I likely turn off lights on people with new behavior like this but
Procedural memory (Score:1)
This is not news. The existence, properties, and behavior of procedural memory have been well established for decades.
It's true (Score:2)
I can drink beer and stir soup at the same time.
Seriously though, this is interesting but it shouldn't be news to any sysadmin.
As a lecturer (Score:3)
If I am presenting material I know well, I can "split" my attention, to do some quality control. One half of me goes on lecturing, while the other half is evaluating the presentation. Speaking clearly and loud enough? Too many ums and ahs? Looking at the students enough? Is the board work neat enough? Etc.
I don't do this often, because it is a really weird feeling and shifting back into just one "me" is a strange lurch.
Your brain is constantly "re-wiring" itself (Score:2)
Every time you experience something, every time you learn something, every time you see something, or do something, your brain gets re-wired. That's literally how the brain works.
So a better headline would be, "Your brain can learn to truly multitask."
This is also kind of obvious, if you think about it. Right now I'm typing, and reading as I type to make sure that what I typed is what I wanted to type. We all eat and carry on conversations with friends at the same time. We all drive and mess with our phones