Multitasking from IOS to our brain

Here below an extract from the book "Distracted mind" written by A Gazzaley and L. D. Rosen

"Interestingly, the term “multitasking” did not originate in the field of psychology or neuroscience, but was borrowed from the computer world where it refers to parallel processing of jobs.

Apple shared an interesting description of this very phenomenon in commercials when the iPhone operating system 4.0 was first released. They were proud to announce the launch of a new feature that was in high demand: “multitasking.” 

Apple claimed that their new iOS operating system used an approach to multitasking that was designed to save battery life. How did they pull this off?

The reason is simple: This is not 100% true multitasking. All system resources are available to all applications, with the system assuming the role of a traffic controller, giving preference to some tasks and less preference to others as needed.

This is essentially how our brains manage multiple tasks that require cognitive control: the prefrontal cortex serves as a traffic controller to facilitate goal management by rapidly switching between neural networks associated with each of the tasks. It is fascinating to read Apple’s description for why they went this route, rather than implementing true multitasking in their phones:

Free-for-all multitasking will consume way too many resources, especially

memory. This will make the system choke, given the limited memory available in these devices.

The CPU would also be taxed, and it would deplete the battery life quicker while slowing down applications running on the foreground.

Such a description could easily have been written about our brains, rather than our iPhones.

Perhaps a reason why our brains did not evolve true multitasking capabilities is that the competition for resources involved in cognitive control would also choke the system and create an energy drain."