The Last Frontier

Two young scientists researched whether multitasking affected their fellow high school students' cognitive performance:

Though most teens perform better when focusing on a single task, those who are “high media multitaskers”—about 15% of the study participants—performed better when working with the distractions of email and music than when focusing on a single activity.

Most people perform poorly if they try to focus on more than one task at the same time; hence the laws against texting while driving. However, for a small minority these seeming distractions are correlated with higher performance.

Parents are concerned about the effect of information overload on the development of young brains. But the opposite---an environment with zero input to the senses ("sensory deprivation")---can also drive a mind mad.

One of the last frontiers of understanding is indeed the origin of understanding, the human brain.