Multitasking Splits the Brain

Most survivors complain that they can no longer multitask. You probably never could do it but this article explains what is possible.
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/multitasking-splits-the-brain.html#.UXXc0CBC5d8.twitter
When the brain tries to do two things at once, it divides and conquers, dedicating one-half of our gray matter to each task, new research shows. But forget about adding another mentally taxing task: The work also reveals that the brain can't effectively handle more than two complex, related activities at once.
When it comes to task management, the prefrontal cortex is key. The anterior part of this brain region forms the goal or intention—for example, "I want that cookie"—and the posterior prefrontal cortex talks to the rest of the brain so that your hand reaches toward the cookie jar and your mind knows whether you have the cookie. So what happens when another goal enters the mix?
To find out, neuroscientists Etienne Koechlin and Sylvain Charron of the French biomedical research agency INSERM in Paris turned to functional magnetic resonance imaging, which measures changes in brain activity. They monitored 16 women and 16 men, aged 19 to 32, as they performed a complicated letter-matching task. Shown letters pulled at random from the word “tablet” on a computer screen, volunteers had to determine whether two successive letters (either all lowercase or all uppercase) appeared in the same order as they do in the word. To multitask, they also had to deal with uppercase and lowercase letters at the same time, matching them to either all uppercase or all lowercase words. The volunteers received a small amount of money if they performed well.

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