Brain activations during bimodal dual tasks depend on the nature and combination of component tasks.

ABSTRACT: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activations during nine different dual tasks in which the participants were required to simultaneously attend to concurrent streams of spoken syllables and written letters. They performed a phonological, spatial or "simple" (speaker-gender or font-shade) discrimination task within each modality. We expected to find activations associated specifically with dual tasking especially in the frontal and parietal cortices. However, no brain areas showed systematic dual task enhancements common for all dual tasks. Further analysis revealed that dual tasks including component tasks that were according to Baddeley's model "modality atypical," that is, the auditory spatial task or the visual phonological task, were not associated with

SUBMITTER: Salo E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4341542 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature