Science News reports on recent research indicating that any kind
of multitasking while driving is dangerous. Not just the obvious
distraction of juggling a cell phone, but even talking to a
passenger or listening to a book on tape. The researchers used a
driving simulator inside an MRI machine to measure brain
activations. "Attending to what someone says galvanizes
language-related brain areas while simultaneously reducing
activity in spatial regions that coordinate driving behavior.
This finding suggests that people who combine relatively
automatic tasks, such as speech comprehension and car driving,
exceed a biological limit on the amount of systematic brain
activity they can accommodate at one time, the researchers
propose. As a result, the less-ingrained skill — in this case,
driving, which is learned long after a person grasps a native
language — takes a neural hit."