Brains, Birds and Babies at This Fall’s UND’s Undergraduate Showcase

(Photo by Walter Criswell UND Today)

(By Walter Criswell. UND Today)  – Gavin Fitzgerald, a third-year psychology major, presented research on multitasking skills and their neural correlates. The research asked a simple question: if you train people to juggle multiple tasks, do they get better at it over time?

To test it, Fitzgerald and his research partners used a demanding setup that included memorizing letters, solving quick number problems, managing a shrinking visual gauge, responding to audio cues, and centering a reticle using a joystick.

“We wanted to kind of mimic that experience of actually flying,” Fitzgerald said, pointing to a photo of himself going through the experiment, joystick in hand.

The results showed workload differences at the highest levels but no clear improvement or decline across the study’s timeframe. The next question: what happens over a longer time window?

Just as important, the research changed Fitzgerald’s trajectory.

“Oh my gosh, I want to do neuroscience, and I want to do neuroimaging,” he said, explaining how working with noninvasive neuroimaging reshaped his post-college plans.