Passingham R E
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, U.K.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1996 Oct 29;351(1346):1473-9. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1996.0132.
The paper considers the question of why subjects are poor at performing two tasks simultaneously if both require attention. It is shown using positron emission tomography (PET) that during new learning of a motor sequence task the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex are extensively activated, but that they are no longer activated when a motor sequence has been practiced for an hour until it is automatic. It is also shown that early in motor learning there is interference if subjects are required to generate verbs at the same time, but that the interference is much less if they are required to do this late in motor learning. The prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex are activated during verb generation. It is therefore suggested that the interference occurs centrally, and that it occurs in either prefrontal or anterior cingulate cortex.
本文探讨了如果两项任务都需要注意力，为何受试者在同时执行这两项任务时表现不佳的问题。正电子发射断层扫描（PET）显示，在新学习一个运动序列任务的过程中，前额叶和前扣带回皮层会被广泛激活，但当一个运动序列经过一小时的练习直到自动化时，它们就不再被激活。研究还表明，在运动学习的早期，如果要求受试者同时生成动词，会产生干扰，但如果在运动学习后期要求他们这样做，干扰就会小得多。在生成动词的过程中前额叶和前扣带回皮层会被激活。因此有人提出，干扰发生在中枢，且发生在前额叶或前扣带回皮层。
