Science reveals people are capable of multitasking — it just requires practice

Health newsScience reveals people are capable of multitasking — it just requires practiceNew research reveals a mental workaround that is activated through repetition and experience. Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Add NBC News to GoogleHow to build healthy habits to improve longevity and health span05:56Get more newsLiveonShareAdd NBC News to GoogleJune 4, 2026, 8:20 AM EDTBy David CoxYour brain is capable of learning to multitask without your realizing it, according to a new study. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.It has long been thought that using your brain to work simultaneously on multiple things was impossible. That’s because problem-solving, logical planning and abstract thinking are all carried out by a key region of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex, which is notoriously inflexible.“It’s made to do one thing at a time, which is often a good thing,” said Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University School of Medicine and senior author of the research published Thursday in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. “You can focus on something and suppress everything else to stay on task.”Neuroscientists previously suspected that when it was forced to juggle, the overworked prefrontal cortex tried to rapidly switch back and forth between tasks. An experiment carried out by Riesenhuber and colleagues has revealed that the brain has a workaround that can be activated over time through repetition and accumulated experience. It can rewire itself to carry out one task subconsciously, freeing up the prefrontal cortex to focus on something else.Eleven men and women ages 18 to 29 spent several hours sifting through computer-generated images of cars as part of an app-based game and learned to sort them into one of two categories based on similarities and differences in shape. Over five to 10 weeks, they repeated the sorting more than 30,000 times....