brain's construction limits the ability of humans to make more than two choices at the same time

French scientists have discovered the brain's construction limits the ability of humans to make more than two choices at the same time.

While some people may think their ability to multitask comes easily, a report published in the current issue of Science magazine suggests the brain’s two lobes automatically divides the ability to do two tasks in half, and the report warned overloading the brain with several tasks simultaneously reduces its ability to function as effectively. The study was authored by Sylvain Charron and Etienne Koechlin of the Institut National de la Santé and Ecole Normale Superieure, respectively.
The report noted the brain’s anterior prefrontal cortex (APC) gives humans the ability to simultaneously pursue several goals. Koechlin and Charron set out to find how the brain’s motivational system, including the medial frontal cortex (MFC), drives the pursuit of these concurrent goals. Using brain imaging, they observed that the left and right MFC, which jointly drive single-task performance, divide under dual-task conditions. “While the left MFC encodes the rewards driving one task, the right MFC concurrently encodes those driving the other task,” an abstract of the report explained. “The same dichotomy was observed in the lateral frontal cortex, whereas the APC combined the rewards driving both tasks. The two frontal lobes thus divide for representing simultaneously two concurrent goals coordinated by the APC. The human frontal function seems limited to driving the pursuit of two concurrent goals simultaneously.”

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