Brain on overload during multitasking while driving

William Atkins
Thursday, 08 May 2008 23:19

Science - Health

Before the experiment was conducted, the researchers thought that one part of the brain would not be adversely affected by the activity going on in the other part of the brain.

However, both parts of the brain worked less efficiently while the subjects were performing two simultaneous tasks.

Dr. Just concluded that a reduction in efficiency occurs for the brain when performing different tasks—even when different parts of the brain are used for the various tasks.

The brain is not used as efficiently to perform two tasks at the same time when compared to doing the same two tasks at different times.

Thus, the study concludes that multitasking while driving diminishes ones’ ability to drive safety.

In fact, the researchers state that the use of cell phones while driving is an especially serious problem. Talkers on cell phones will give much more attention to the listener on the other end of the cell phone than to the actions needed to drive in traffic.

They also state that other activities performed while driving, such as eating, listening to music, talking with passengers, shaving, and applying makeup, may also hurt one’s ability to drive.

Dr. Just states, “Listening to talk radio or to spoken directions from a navigation system while driving probably have similar effects to what we found. Multitasking puts high demands on the brain.” [May 10, 2008, page 7, Science News: “Shifting priorities at the wheel”]

The results of their study (“A decrease in brain activation associated with driving when listening to someone speak”) are published in the April 18, 2008 issue of the journal Brain Research.

Besides Dr. Just, the other researchers in the study are Timothy A. Keller and Jacquelyn Cynkar, all from the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging within the Department of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.)

The abstract to their paper states, “Behavioral studies have shown that engaging in a secondary task, such as talking on a cellular telephone, disrupts driving performance.”

“This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the impact of concurrent auditory language comprehension on the brain activity associated with a simulated driving task.”

“Participants steered a vehicle along a curving virtual road, either undisturbed or while listening to spoken sentences that they judged as true or false. The dual-task condition produced a significant deterioration in driving accuracy caused by the processing of the auditory sentences. At the same time, the parietal lobe activation associated with spatial processing in the undisturbed driving task decreased by 37% when participants concurrently listened to sentences.”

“The findings show that language comprehension performed concurrently with driving draws mental resources away from the driving and produces deterioration in driving performance, even when it does not require holding or dialing a phone.