Human Brain and the CPU

When I was going through some of my old mails, I came across a self-sent mail. I had written it one year back as a comment to an article written by my friend Suri about the multitasking ability of the human brain. But due to some reason, I had not posted it. Here is a modified version of that comment:

Brain in all essence, acts as the central processing unit (CPU) of the body. It can perform calculations, control various organs of the body, process the inputs from different organs. However, the question is, can it handle multiple tasks at the same time?


To quote the examples given in the debates that are mentioned in that article, brain can perform multiple tasks like debugging a program and listening to music at the same time. Similarly, one can chop vegetables while talking on phone. But, once the brain finds some task to be crucial, it starts ignoring the other tasks, as a result of which, one has to stop the less-important activity, such as listening to music or chopping vegetables.

The debate, seems equally poised. But in reality, I believe, our brain can still handle multiple tasks and all it needs as prerequisite is some training. In both the situations explained, the secondary activity was stopped just to avoid the disturbance created by it on the primary activity. It doesn't mean that the mind had become uni-tasking.

Remember the time when you started to learn car driving. When you concentrated on the direction, you forgot to remove pressure on the accelerator; when you concentrated on applying the brakes, you forgot to change the gears; and when you concentrated on changing the gears, the direction of motion became wayward. How did all this happen? Is it because of the brain's inablility to handle multitasking?

Also, remember the good old time when you started learning bicycle. You couldn't do it the first time - why? Because you were too busy concentrating on pedalling that you forgot to control the handle; or you were more concerned about the road ahead that you forgot to turn the handle to balance. But eventually, after a fair amount of practice, you learnt to ride; didn't you?

While driving, you watch the road, you turn the direction, you press the clutch and you change the gear. And if the vehicle is a bike, you also need to balance it properly. Can you think of these being done 'one by one' at any given time? Not quite possible.

I believe all the tasks that the brain performs are controlled by mind - either conscious or subconscious. Conscious mind asks for active interacion of the brain, while the subconscious mind can do the 'routine job' without much interaction with brain.

When you started learning to drive or ride, all tasks were getting executed through conscious mind, and it failed miserably. You did a lot of practice, which means you trained the subconscious mind to do all these activities. Now conscious mind is free to do any other job: you can talk or listen to music when you drive.

Conscious mind can handle only one task at a time. But subconscious mind can handle virtually infinite number of tasks. The beauty lies in the fact that one can instruct the subconscious mind to do the things conscious mind is doing. That's what we call practice. Once the subconscious mind has 'learnt' to execute the tasks of conscious mind, you can transfer the task for the subconscious mind, relieve the conscious mind from that task.

If you are very much used to listening music without getting disturbed, you can debug the program easily with music on. If you are deft in chopping vegetables, you can still continue to talk on phone without cutting your fingers. Practice, indeed, makes man perfect!