[laika18]

So if multitasking leads to a weak frontal lobe, does it promote blanking out too?

If you've ever forgotten what you are reading in a chemistry book, or lost your chain of thought mid-sentance writing a paper, you know what I mean. Why do other parts of the brain hijack the frontal lobe so easily at some activities but not others? Thats literally what it feels like to me.

I can pinpoint exactly when I'm about to procrastinate to a moment when i forget what im writing. Its when my brain wants to look for something else to do, to think about, but i don't let it. i wont let it go there, so it hovers in limbo for a second. It really tries to reject my current activity.

However I was kind of undisciplined as a kid.

I wouldn't say I'm ADD because i can concentrate on certain things for hours. When it comes to certain jobs however, it depends on the day.

If the brain is programmed to disengage when its bored, because it finds boring material irrelevant for survival how do you bridge that gap ?

I can care about activity B a lot if its relevant to a job. But thats not always enough to be completely submerged. Yes i can recover from getting side-tracked sometimes but why get side-tracked at all? So can anyone studying the brain lemme know?

[pegasus]

Well, from what I know the frontal lobe is the part for personality/emotions and slightly further back has a part for problem solving. The temporal lobe is for memory and word understanding. Emotions such as anxiety can halt the ability to concentrate. You won't really know where your problem is stemming from unless you are tested for neurological problems or whether this is emotion based.

[Yoda]

fMRIs are used to evaluate this. No references handy at the moment of specific research but google scholar could pull up some studies.

[Fresia]

I don't know the science but know the effects of blanking out when I multi-task. That a pdoc once described a more appropriate definition of multi-tasking is 'how to screw-up multiple things at one time.' He said research has shown that tests done on the frontal lobe for completing tasks show that the mind is better equipped to handle one task at a time to complete them without being thwarted. Practicing mindfulness and focusing on one task is less prone to error and with better success of completion in actually less time, and then doing the next tasks. The same tasks done one right after another take less time than multi-tasking.

[Lexi232]

"fMRIs"? Wuts that?
And I know what you mean about all that blanking out or going elsewhere while mid working/talking thing. I do that a lot. but I've always- well not always, but for quite a few years now, I've assumed it ADHD, because the right dose of ADHD med stops that problem (and then the wrong dose of ADHD med causes that problem to be even more severe). So i know in my particular case, that Stimulants (As the ADHD meds that i've been on) can either better, or worsen it. along with many other issues. So maybe something in these stimulants can clue someone into what it does and why it's happening and what the brain is either lacking or having too much of that causes this to happen.

[missbelle]

Just before I fell asleep for my nap I was reading an article on exactly the same thing
"...your brain can only process so many complex tasks simultaneously before it fills up and freezes. The average number of mental goals a person can manage one at one time ranges from three to nine, but keeping track of four or five can be challenging..explains David Meyer, PH.D.,an authority on multitasking, and director of the Brain,Cognition, and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan...."

A recomendation from Dr. Meyer is to practice mindfulness."..the more you train yourself to focus single-mindedly, the easier it will be to do it automatically......"