And in today's candidate in the "Questionable Interpretations of Scientific Findings" division, we have the claim that the brain's ability to focus on two goals at the same time is the same thing as successfully multitasking:

For the study, 32 right-handed subjects were asked to match letters while their brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subjects were motivated by a monetary reward they would receive based on how many letters they matched without error. During this baseline test, both hemispheres of the brain's medial frontal cortex (which is involved in motivation) appeared active. However, when the researchers introduced a second task, where the subjects had to match like uppercase letters in addition to matching like lowercase letters with separately accruing reward tallies, Koechlin and his coauthor Sylvain Charron (of the same institution) found that the subjects' brains divided the two reward-based goals between the two sides of the region.

So if I'm interpreting this correctly, two tasks were distributed between the brain's two hemispheres. Booyah!

But both tasks involved language, and both tasks were very similar to each other... and performed in a single sitting. Give the shared circumstances of the lab setting, the computer platform, etc., it almost seems like one simple task became one complex task. I would like to see the experiment conducted with the subject organizing letters while trying to talk on the phone with, say, a realtor**.

The new work does not, however, show that the brain can actually execute two distinct tasks, such as letter matching, at precisely the same time, Paul Dux a psychology lecturer at the University of Queensland in St. Lucia, Australia, noted in an email to ScientificAmerican.com. The data reveal that though separate goals might be running concurrently in the brain, "there are still large dual-task costs" when people have to switch between two tasks making for "non-efficient multitasking," cautioned Dux...

Thank god for the letters section, I always say.

I'd like to point out a broader issue, which is who benefits if we can effectively multitask. The multitasker perhaps. But more likely the taskmaster. Just a thought.

** nothing against realtors. They're one of the few professional classes I know who still rely heavily on the phone.