Department of Psychology, National Chung Cheng University, Min-Hsiung Township, Chia-Yi County, Taiwan ; Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2013 Oct 14;8(10):e77408. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0077408. eCollection 2013.
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.
虽然已知有些人可以有效地同时执行两项任务，但也有些人不能。大脑如何处理同时执行多项任务仍不清楚。在本研究中，我们旨在评估哪些大脑区域与任务表现中的各种现象相对应。19 名被试者被要求依次完成三个任务块，包括两个单模态任务和一个双模态任务。单模态任务分别测量视觉特征绑定或听觉音高比较，而双模态任务则要求同时执行两个任务。功能磁共振成像（fMRI）结果与先前的研究结果一致，表明不同的大脑区域，如视觉皮层、额眼区（FEF）、外侧顶叶（BA7）和内侧和下额前叶，参与了视觉单模态任务的处理。此外，颞叶和布罗德曼区 43（BA43）参与了听觉单模态任务的处理。这些结果支持了模态特异性注意的概念。与单模态任务相比，双模态任务需要激活额外的大脑区域。此外，虽然双模态任务中被抑制的大脑区域与良好的表现相关，但在被试者仅在两个同时任务中的一个中表现良好的情况下，这些区域并未被抑制。这些结果表明，有效的信息处理并不需要某些大脑区域过度活跃；相反，特定的大脑区域需要相对抑制，以保持警觉并同时执行两项任务。同时，它也为培训课程中的生物反馈提供了神经基础，例如如何同时执行多项任务的课程。
