Older brains have trouble multitasking
April 13th 2011 19:14
My kids don’t do one single thing around the house.
Instead, if they’re doing their homework, they’re also instant messaging, texting, checking Facebook, listening to music and purposely ignoring me when I speak.
And while I fume they can’t possibly do all this at one time, it may be me that’s the missing link.
Or at least my aging brain.
Researchers have found older brains can’t physically switch tracks the same way young minds are able to.
In research released this week, neuroscientists at the University of California at San Francisco discovered a link between doing a lot of things at the same time and misses in the short-term memory — the part of the brain that clings onto bits of information for brief intervals.
Dr. Adam Gazzaley found the working memory of older people can’t handle multi-tasking like young minds.
In his work, he compared brain scans — as they were juggling activities — of people in their 20s and elders in their 60s.
Gazzaley says aged brains were less able to get past an interruption to refocus on an original memory.
And it wasn’t because seniors were more involved — or more focused — on whatever the interruption was. It’s just that younger subjects could make the move back to an original task faster. However, researchers are not sure why.
But the news isn’t all good for kids who think they can do it all — and all at the same time.
Gazzaley tells QMI Agency: “There is accumulating evidence that individuals of all age groups perform worse under multitasking conditions than single tasking.
“The impact of how those young adults engage in extreme multitasking and how it will impact their cognition as they age is an important research focus now.”
Scientists are now working on the ways old brains may be reconditioned to make the leaps better.
They also want to know if there’s a sliding scale as we age.
The latest findings are published in the online journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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