Posted on 11/12/2017 9:37:11 AM PST by sodpoodle
Question
Why can't the human body multi-task? If you turn your right foot and move it slowly in a clockwise circle. So you're going round in a circle with your foot. Then writing a number 6 with the same hand that you're moving your foot on a piece of paper. But the better way to show this actually is to take your hand on the same side of your body as you're moving your foot. Now, try and make that move in a circle in the opposite direction to your foot. The foot follows the hand. Why does that happen?
Answer
It's very, very difficult. You can do it with practice, but it is incredibly hard to do. If you try and do that number 6, you'll find that number 6 flips around, and you start drawing it backwards. And the reason for this is to do with the way your brain codes for movement. Because you can easily do that if you use the opposite sides of the body. If you've got a hand which you do a clockwise circle with and your right hand and then you use your left leg, you'll easily do a circle in the anticlockwise direction because you're using two different sides of your brain. If you're trying to use the same side of your body, the motor cortex which is the bit of the brain which codes for movements, the way this is working is that it doesn't actually code for a brain cell, telling a muscle what to do. The brain actually codes for movements by what's called a tuning curve. So you have a cluster of nerve cells which fire off when you want to make a movement with a part of the body into a certain direction in space. And those nerve cells don't just switch on muscles that move say, just the arm. They switch on muscles which would move your leg in the same direction too, but they turn them on a bit less than the motor neurons that control the arm. So basically, you're facilitating or making it easier for your leg to move in the same direction as your arm. But it takes a little bit more switch on to make the leg move as well. Therefore, if you try then to make a movement in the opposite direction with the leg, you're basically facilitating another group of nerve cells to move in the opposite direction. So the two things are trying to fight it out and it's, whichever one wins, actually ends up going in that direction, and the arm is such a dominant force that's somewhat brain devoted to it, that I think it probably overwhelms the signal for the leg which is why the leg finds it hard to be dominant in that way. But it's an amazing demonstration, isn't it? It's great fun. You can have a lot of fun with that at parties.
Thanks...it is a fun experiment and I’ve never run across that before. Very cool!
Playing piano is a sequence of events along the same process.
Try playing piano and strumming a guitar at the same time.
Stupid supposition....the body multi tasks all the time. My heart beats while I breath. My eyes see while I listen
There is film of Ginger Baker keeping 3/4 time with his left hand, 4/4 with his right, 7/8 with his left foot and 12/8 with his right.
And it actually sounds good. Especially when he brings it all back to 4/4 for the crescendo.
If that’s not multi-tasking, I need to be further educated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJefbp-s9LA
Regard,
I think that to say the body can’t multitask is painting with an awfully broad brush, I mean the body doesn’t even really “sleep”. We’re talking about attentional multi tasking here, and even that is probably too broad when it comes to highly learned, overpractised behaviors like driving or playing music. But I think there is something to it. Working on ten tasks at ones is attentionally fatiguing, and I try to reduce that as much as I can.
Steve Gadd used to do something similar. I speak Drum, but not as fluently as those guys.
The body waits to breathe in between heartbeats and the heart won’t beat between breaths?
Both were jazz drummers.
Charlie Watts, first a jazz drummer, does it to a lesser extent on the rare opportunity he has with a 4/4 band.
Just trying to conceive it one’s head, without actually doing it, is impossible for everyone except the .000001%.
Easily done. But I multitask all the time. :)
Here's an assignment for you: Look up an album called 'The Charlie Watts Orchestra'.
Not enough hands, but I’m sure Linsdsey Buckingham can do it.
Computers don’t multitask. They set up multiple tasks, and give each task a small slice of time. After the slice of time, the task is suspended, until its next slice comes along.
It appears that the computer is multitasking, but it isn’t.
It would have served no purpose if the human, or other species, body had developed something like this time-slice multitasking. To use a mainframe analogy, A whole complex of control blocks, save areas, and interrupt processors would have been necessary, along with additional storage to hold the task’s memory while it is taking a rest.
The current system, of the human body, serves the purpose quite well. It wasn’t designed for complex multitasking. With practice, one can learn to put a task on hold and handle another one. Some bosses seem to think that this ability is a job requirement. I don’t.
Not sure what the heck they are talking about. We run the autonomic systems for our heart, breathing, metabolisms, etc. Subconsciously we are running through a number of different things going on in our lives, consciously we are usually focused on something we’re doing at the moment, but even then we often are distracted, day-dreaming or trying to do more than one thing at a time (cooking and talking to the kids, sweeping and listening to music, typing on FR while thinking about next weeks work travel, etc).
Our body multi-tasks all the time.
It was intended to be a fun exercise - a break from the political and daily crises.
I should have made up a better Header - had no idea it would offend or upset so many Freepers.
I’ve peed and pooped my pants at the same time...does that count ?
A perfect example of the human body (in this case, both hands and feet) multi-tasking. The feet are playing the deep notes by "walking" across pedals below the organist (I took organ lessons in my undergraduate years as a Music Major - it's hard!). Seeing this performed up close and personal is an amazing thing to witness if you ever get the chance.
Hell, I have trouble unitasking. Thanks sodpoodle.
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