Neurology of Multiboxing

http://www.physorg.com/news190627413.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research has shown that the brain handles two tasks at once by dedicating half the brain to one task, and the other half to the second. This means it may not be able to effectively handle more than two complicated tasks simultaneously.

The medial frontal cortex is a part of the front of the brain above the eyes, and is thought to control the pursuit of rewards for successfully carrying out a task. Scientists at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Paris wondered what happens when a person is asked to do two jobs at once. To find out, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor the brain activity of 16 male and 16 female volunteers, all aged 19 to 32, and all right-handed, as they simultaneously performed two related tasks. The volunteers were offered a monetary reward that reduced if they made errors.


The tasks were to match upper case letters and to match lower case letters, switching back and forth between the two tasks. Rewards for each task were calculated separately and depended on the numbers matched without error. The researchers, neuroscientists Sylvain Charron and Etienne Koechlin, found that when the volunteers tackled only one task, both halves of the medial frontal cortex worked on it, but when they tackled both tasks simultaneously, the left side of the frontal cortex corresponded to one of the tasks and the right side corresponded to the other, with the two sides working independently. Results improved as the monetary reward increased, and there was no significant difference in the results of the men and women volunteers.


Professor Koechlin said the results suggest the brain could only effectively handle two tasks simultaneously because it has only two hemispheres. To test this, the scientists took a further 16 volunteers and added a third task to the previous two: matching letters of the same color. This group consistently forgot one of the three jobs, and also made triple the errors of the dual-tasking subjects. This means that, as Koechlin explained, if you try to tackle three jobs at once, the frontal cortex will always neglect one of them.


The research paper was published online in the April 15 issue of Science. The findings could have practical applications in areas in which people routinely multi-task, such as air traffic control, and in neurological conditions in which the ability to multi-task is lost.



More information: Divided Representation of Concurrent Goals in the Human Frontal Lobes, Science 16 April 2010: Vol. 328. no. 5976, pp. 360 - 363. DOI:10.1126/science.1183614

Well look who the cat dragged in...

I actually looked at your profile yesterday, wondering where you had gone :)

You inspired me to multibox.

How did you 3D print company do?

That test is fine and all but we are really doing one thing at a time in a way. I mean when you type are you doing one thing per key on your keyboard, there are a lot of keys but not each one is "one thing".

Its all "muscle memory", if you do a sequence of events 100,000 times you don't forget anything. If this sequence is considered one thing or 100 things its no matter.


You have set up muscles and a part of the brain to do it automatacllly you dont use your frontal cortex to analize what you are doing. Like typeing you don't analize anything to firgure out the next key to hit. Same with breathing you don't stop and think is it time to take another breath. You breath and type at the same time perfectly is that multi tasking? And add a third task you wont make errors breathing duh ....

His test deal with tasks you have never done before and have no muscle memory of, and he is probably right that you do poorly. Do his test 1000 times and then see what happens when you add in the third task .....

Hi Xzin!

I have been doing very well - just super busy. We have 2 3D printers, a waterjet and all sorts of other fun toys now. We kind of evolved from a 3d printer company to a full fledged rapid prototype company. It doesn't leave me time to play WoW but I am having a blast figuring out creative solutions to all sorts of fun and interesting challenges. I do keep up with WoW as much as I can though - I am glad there are people out there still boxing and being successful doing it.

*cough* HASBEN *cough*.

Get your ass on MSN fool.

Good to see you again Xzin, what's the website for your company again? :)

I rarely take stock in these things. Usually its hard to get a hold of the actual study without paying some academic journal for it, which means the methodology and original conclusions are going to get filtered through whoever reported on it, usually amounting to little more than "multi-tasking good" or "multi-tasking bad".

For me, this has two points of interest. First, the standard method most of us use to play collapses into one or two tasks (depending on the variety of characters played). For me its controlling the tank manually & spamming a limited amount of buttons for dps/heals (which over time are locked in memory as a routine). For multi-class groups, I would expect it being more complicated at first, but ends up the same way. So I don't see anything really being neglected by this method.

However, my second point of interest is... this explains WHY we may lock up or fail to recover when the crap hits the fan during a run. Especially when beginning multiboxing. When an instance pull goes wrong suddenly we're less competent then a PuG full of 12-year olds. Something that should be possible to live through (with effort) just completely wipes the group because our minds can't always think on the fly for all types of roles (tank / melee dps / caster dps / heals). For me, its usually tank grabs all the mobs while dps preps/launches AES but I don't take stock of healths which quickly neglects the healer's role. Or I heal like mad but the tank isn't producing enough agro then dps / healer go down.

So multiboxing can be multitasking, but it appears to me that once the rhythm is learned it becomes a single task. 22112211221122112211 etc