Targeted Brain Training May Help with Multitasking

In a recent study published in the journals AGE and PLOS ONE, a research team at the IUGM Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal and the University of Montreal identified the area of the brain involved in multitasking and ways to train it. Cooking while having a conversation, watching a movie while browsing the Web, or driving while listening to a radios how — multitasking is an essential skill in daily life. Many commercial software applications promise to improve this ability through brain training exercises, however many specialists question their usefulness. “To improve your cardiovascular fitness, most people know you need to run laps on the track and not work on your flexibility. But the way targeted training correlates to cognition has been a mystery for a long time. Our work shows that there is also an association between the type of cognition training performed and the resulting effect. This is true for healthy seniors who want to improve their attention of memory and is particularly important for patients who suffer from damage in specific areas of the brain,” said the study’s lead researcher. During the study, the researchers used fMRI imaging technology to evaluate the impact of this training on various types of attentional tasks and on brain function. To read more about this function, click here.