Forget the Myth: New Brain Study Reveals We Actually Can Multitask (With the Right Training)
For years, the conventional wisdom in psychology and neuroscience has been clear: true multitasking is a myth. Experts have long insisted that the human brain simply cannot focus on two things at once. But a groundbreaking new study from Georgetown University is flipping that narrative on its head, revealing that our brains are fully capable of multitasking—they just need the right training to get there.
Published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, the research challenges the idea that divided attention is biologically impossible. Instead, it shows that with enough practice, the brain can shift tasks onto cognitive autopilot.
The Science of "Autopilot"
Maximilian Riesenhuber, a neuroscience professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and co-director of the Center for Neuroengineering, led the study. His team set out to understand the neurological shift that occurs when a task transitions from requiring intense, conscious focus to running on complete unconscious autopilot.
To illustrate this, Riesenhuber points to learning how to drive. When you are a teenager behind the wheel for the first time, the task demands your absolute, undivided attention. You can't even hold a conversation. But after years of practice, you can easily navigate traffic while listening to a podcast and chatting with a passenger.
While previous science has heavily focused on the first phase—how the brain learns a new skill—the mechanics of what happens after a skill becomes effortless have remained largely a mystery.
The Experiment
To map this transition, the researchers recruited 11 adults between the ages of 18 and 29 for an intensive training regimen. Using a phone app, participants spent five to 10 weeks completing over 30,000 trials where they sorted morphed images of cars into different categories based on subtle differences in shape.
Before and after this grueling practice, the subjects underwent functional MRIs and EEGs to monitor their brain activity.
The scans revealed a fascinating neurological handoff. When participants were first learning the sorting task, their prefrontal cortex—the brain's hub for executive function and conscious thought—lit up. Previous research suggested this area could only handle one task at a time.
However, after extensive practice, the brain shifted the workload. The temporal cortex, which is responsible for encoding long-term memory, took over the execution of the task. Essentially, the prefrontal cortex learns the skill, packages the information, and hands it off to the temporal cortex for automatic execution.
Real-World Implications and "Muscle Memory"
“This has implications for critical real-world scenarios, like when a radiologist can accurately classify masses on an X-ray as benign or malignant fairly automatically, often without extensive deliberation, thanks to years of training,” said Patrick Cox, an assistant professor of psychology at Lehigh University who worked on the study.
Michael Schoenberg, a licensed psychologist and professor at the University of South Florida who was not involved in the research, told NBC News that these findings perfectly explain how humans develop highly specialized skill sets.
He compared the brain's automation process to athletic muscle memory. An average person will likely miss a basketball three-pointer on their first try, but an elite player sinks it effortlessly because their brain has automated the physical mechanics.
“I have colleagues who can look at an EEG, and I just see squiggly lines and they see a person,” Schoenberg explained. “As you practice for hours and hours and hours, you get the so-called muscle memory.”
The Flip Side: Compulsive Behaviors
While this neurological shift is fantastic for building elite skills, it also sheds light on the darker side of habit formation, such as compulsive behaviors. Because these automated behaviors bypass the prefrontal cortex's conscious control and move into deeper brain circuits, they become incredibly difficult to break.
“The first step to unlearning something is understanding where it is actually happening in the brain,” Riesenhuber explained. “This shows why strategies like telling someone to think of something else don’t really help, because they don’t really have the behavior under conscious control.”