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Actually, 90 percent of your brain is not just languishing, it turns out.
Good news for all those who ever had a teacher or a parent say “If you would just apply yourself you could learn anything! You’re only using 10 percent of your brain!”
All those people were wrong. If we did use only 10 percent of our brains we’d be close to dead, according to Eric Chudler, director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, who maintains an entertaining brain science website for kids. “When recordings are made from brain EEGs, or PET scans, or any type of brain scan, there’s no part of the brain just sitting there unused,” he said.
Larry Squire, a research neuroscientist with the Veterans Administration hospital in San Diego, and at the University of California San Diego, pointed out that “any place the brain is damaged there is a consequence.”
Damaged brains may have been where this myth originated. During the first half of the last century, a pioneering neuroscientist named Karl Lashley experimented on rodents by excising portions of their brains to see what happened. When he put these rodents in mazes they’d been trained to navigate, he found that animals with missing bits of brain often successfully navigated the mazes.
This wound up being transmuted into the idea humans must be wasting vast brain potential. With the rise of the human potential movement in the 1960s, some preached that all sorts of powers, including bending spoons and psychic abilities, were laying dormant in our heads and that all we had to do was get off our duffs and activate them.
“That’s a case of something one often sees, of taking something from the world of psychology and in trying to make the idea concrete, bringing in the mechanisms of biology,” Squire explained. “It’s fair to say we can all do better, and we have room for improvement through practice and developing skills, but that has nothing to do with the idea that we use only 10 percent of our brains.”
The brain, Chudler said, isn’t like a disc drive with some set amount of capacity. It’s a dynamic maze of wiring where new connections can be created in response to new stimuli, or lost with disuse. And much of it is constantly occupied not with intellectual thinking, but running our systems.
“That’s why the brain is such an expensive organ,” he explained. “It requires 20 percent of our blood supply, and it’s a real energy hog.” If we used only 10 percent of it, the brain wouldn’t require such high maintenance.
“Besides,” he pointed out, "why would our brains have gotten bigger through evolution if so much of it were going unused?”
Brian Alexander is co-author, with Larry Young PhD., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love Sex and the Science of Attraction," to be published September 13.
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I don't know if this is a myth. Sometimes, I wake up from a very detailed dream. Sometimes, my mind has created elaborate settings within the dream, that I know in my conscious moments, I would never imagine. Or in my dreams, I've discussed topics with a higher level of accumen or understanding than I seem to possess in my conscious moments. I awaken from these dreams amazed. To think that my mind is capable of a higher level of thought that I've not managed to tap into during conscious moments. Makes me wonder about the possibilities if I were only able to tap into that creativity when needed.
Well, I know what you're saying, but that doesn't mean you're only using 10% of your brain. I think people subconsciously retain way more information than they suspect and it isn't always accessible via the conscious. That's probably why we dream: there's an overabundance of accumulated sensory input that has no outlet and the brain is just looking for something to do with it. Sort of like a toddler you give too much sugar and then tell to sit still. He's gotta do something with all that extra energy.
I know what you mean about the dreams with apparently increased abilities. I've dreamt entirely in Spanish many times, and while I can read and write it very well, for some reason, I stumble like a drunk on my words when I try to speak it. But in my dreams, I can speak like a Telemundo game show host. I'm guessing the years of Spanish from high school and a couple in college are still stuck in there somewhere and need some other way to get out, since my mouth doesn't seem willing to do it.
Well, you use that creativity to convince people that you've been talking to a celestial being and to start a cult like Joseph Smith did.
What?
Shandril, so funny. :)
I hoped it couldn't be true. But then again!!
I know a few living people that use less than 10% of their brain!
Of course we use every part of our brain. I was always under the impression that the 10% was supposed to represent the average thought processing capability.
Shandril. Sure, mormons believe stupid things. But no more so than any other religion. To call them a cult just shows your lack of understanding about what they believe.
Stupid mormon beliefs: Native Americans are Jews. Jesus came to visit them. An angel gave some gold plates to a guy, that he translated with magical..thingys...
Stupid genaric christian beliefs: Moses parting the Red Sea. Two of each animal on the ark. Virgin birth. Reserection. Walking on water. Water to wine.
If you believe in a religion, you believe stuff that seems stupid to people of other religions. Mormons aren't more crazy. They're just newer crazy.
.. And did anybody actually believe that people only used 10% of their brains? I'd heard it, when I was a kid, and even then it sounded dumb, and made up.
Spencer - The only difference between a cult and a religion is how widely the practice is accepted.
I’ve actually always been highly suspicious of the whole "10%" thing ever since I first heard about it as a child. After all, evolution is a fairly efficient and logical process and there would be no need for any creature to have a brain that is 90% larger than it needs to be. On the other hand, it’s also obvious that we don’t use a full 100% of our brains as there are cases on record of people loosing 50% of their brain and still being able to function perfectly normally. Of course, there is also a fair amount of scientific evidence to support the fact that we are not our bodies and that in fact the brain is just an interface of sorts through which we experience the physical universe. And of course this might also explain why it is that a properly trained person can remember every single moment of his life in vivid detail from birth onward even though the physical brain itself is only capable of a fraction of the memory storage necessary to do this. Interesting things to ponder.
They are somewhat misinterpreting to 10% statements. No one ever said that we only used 10% of our brain in a physical sense. The implication of the statement was that we only use about 10% of our potential. It is like saying that you only use 10% of the wiring in your house, because you only use 10% of the total electric current capacity that the wiring system could support. You use every part of your brain, you just do not use all of those parts to their full potential. Even this is debatable, but I definitely do not think that people use anywhere near the full capabilities that the brain provides.
schoolyard most of them are politicians.
No serious researcher has believed ever that you only used 10% of your brain. This is one of those urban myths. But unfortunately it has become commonplace even in medical schools along with many other medical myths (such as that the average temp is 98.6 or that you should drink 8 12-oz glasses of water a day, or that a physician has a "doctorate".) Physicians are still taught that only the cortex of the brain is involved in higher functions and that isn't even close either, but it is the source of the 10% thing since only 10% is cortex. But MRI's have long since laid that old wive's tale to rest.
It was well known to Galen that any injury to the brain caused the loss of some function. That alone is sufficient evidence to refute the myth and that was 2000 years ago.
What does religion have to do with this article???
Good thing they didn't survey those that back Obama or the results woulda still said 10%
There are definitely people who only use 10 percent of their brains -- most of them are in Washington!
The rest tend to migrate towards various state capitals.
Crying shame....religion has nothing to do with the article. It was a veiled attempt at making a snide comment about Romney. It might have the desired affect on people only using 10% of their brain.
You know, it is too bad every thread has to turn into a bashing of something.
I think we use the bulk of our brain.
Whether or not we use the bulk of our brain in meaningfull ways...is whats up for debate.
The mormon church has over 12 million members.... That's farely wide.
If you're only using 10 percent of your brain, you might be a teabagger.
and liberals using the other 90% might just rise close to the level of a teabagger.
Way to turn a scientific article into political trash.
If you are using none of your brain your are a Liberal.. The Government does all your thinking for you..
Hey Shrekk,
Anyone who uses a vile term like Teabagger immediately loses all credibility. Why is it that you lack the muscle in your brain that is supposed to go off and say, "Maybe what I'm about to say is inappropriate."
Let's rephrase it another way. Do you think any worthy role model or leader of any organization is going to resort to using a foul word like that?
And what are your ends? One of the biggest problems in this country is the polarization we have in politics that are dividing and destroying this nation. Does your comment work to bring people together or further tear people apart?
If you want people to believe in your ideology, do you want to persuade quality people of character or the morally defunct?
And you are not alone. An overwhelming number of people who blog here are just like you in their hate-filled rhetoric and it amazes me that you all don't recognize the difference between taking things personally and being ruled by emotion versus using reason and treating people with respect and class.
I'm a social liberal and fiscal conservative. Neither a wall street protester or tea party activist. Neither a democrat or a republican. I am in support of people who understand how the world really works and what it means and takes to be a positive contributor to society, and therefore I cannot support you.
I might tend to agree with you about the "teabaggers" only using 10% of their brains but the problem is I also believe that anyone who consistently drags politics into a non-political discussion is probably using less then 1% of his brain.
Hey...wake up...EVERYTHING is political....absolutely everything....
This means we have all already reached our level of incompetence.
Hmmm - Another scientist who doesn't understand evolution.
And apparently neither do you. The article points out what an energy hog the brain is. It uses a disproportionate amount of our body's resources. If there were no evolutionary advantage to having it, we'd have died out when times got tough and our smaller-brained cousins would have flourished instead.
Actually, the human brain has gotten smaller over the last 10,000-20,000 years.
Read this article:
www.npr.org/2011/01/02/132591244/our-brains-are-shrinking-are-we-getting-dumber
Evolution is worst than a myth. An ever-changing THEORY in which science changes the theory every six-to-ten weeks to accommodate the latest discoveries of the failings of the other evolutional theories.
Neanderthals had larger brains.
That's what distinguishes science from your religious cult.....scientific theories are changed in response to observation and experimental results, whereas your cult is still operating from the fairy tales of bronze-age goat herders .
Has it? How interesting. Perhaps we don't need as much brain to survive in large, cooperative societies. I'll have to read that article when I get back later.
Brian: I'd read the same thing about Neanderthals. Maybe their brains weren't as efficient as ours or weren't as geared towards abstract thinking?
I was told my brain was in my penis. If only it got used more than 10%
You know, gravitation is also just a "theory" but I don't think you're going to go jump out of a building.
Actually "evolution" has been pretty static for almost a century. The only major change has been the replacement of Darwinian gradualism by Gould's punctuated equilibrium about 40 years ago. That one change is all that has been necessary to keep the basic theory right in step with the fossil record as literally millions of discoveries have been made.
Neanderthal brains were larger because they had a better sense of hearing and smell (though not vision) than we have. Researchers can tell this by making casts of Neanderthal brains and seeing what areas are larger or smaller. The visual areas are about the same, but the ones associated with hearing and smell are much larger than modern man. Obviously these were more important to Neanderthal than to modern man, but the visual sense was of about the same importance. Neat stuff!
It's not the size of the brain that matters as much as the density astrocytes.
Chris-I must disagree that evolution has been pretty static for almost a century. Look at the huge leaps that computers and machines have made over the last 50 or 60 years. That is a form of evolution, and the human being may just be a step in the evolutionary process with the dominant life form eventually becoming becoming silicon based rather than carbon based. When machines surpass us in intelligence and eventually become self aware, who knows what will happen. Some in the field predict that the machine will be self aware and smarter than the human by approximately 2035. Anyway, that is one more theory to consider. At my age I will probably not be around to see it, so I wish all you young folk...good luck.
Baldduck, I'm pretty sure Chris meant the theory has been static; not the evolutionary process itself.
“Besides,” he pointed out, "why would our brains have gotten bigger through evolution if so much of it were going unused?”
extra padding for the important part?
That would be like shielding a wire with conductive metal. plus evolution isn't that forward thinking.
That is what most cable shields use.....conductive metal.
I think James may have meant "insulating a wire with conductive metal". A shielded wire has a mesh metallic covering which is grounded. The shielding sits underneath the insulation.
At last vindication for all those kids that really are using all of their brains and are just plain dumb. They can all relax.
I would have voted for this comment if it hadn't been in bold. If you want to draw attention to your post, do it with the words, not bold print. It's just annoying.
Steven!!! You almost got a vote from Spencer?! Damn... I have been patiently waiting for Spencer to even consider giving me a vote, but it has never happened.
Spencer... I may be incorrect, but if I had to guess I would say that Steven couldn't care less about receiving a vote. Hopefully, that goes with the rest of the Newsvine population. If that's not the case, we have become sad individuals. If you disagree with this, you only use 10% of your brain...
Please give me a vote... I long for it- I need it in order to boost my self esteem and ego.
Please, Mythbusters beat him to this by at least four years. We never use more then 35% of our brains though, so there is some truth in that we cannot use all of our brain power.
I think that the myth is based on facts: By the time a psychiatrist is done drugging someone, he or she will indeed be using only 10% of his or her brain. The rest will be, more or less, in a coma.
It could be that only 10% is used for thinking, and 90% used for running the body in which case the teachers were correct. On the other hand, from what I've seen, I don't believe most people use even 10% for independent thinking or rational thought.
It would depend on how its measured. The indexes here are fairly naive.
Btw, this is a recycled piece.
This info is way old. I just don't understand how that myth has hung around so long. I suspect that the original, lost to time, statement is something like; "You only use 10% of your brain on any given task." That would be more realistic.
I had a brain surgeon state that the 10% myth was a fact. I hope and pray that I never need him in my head! In his defense, he did admit that if I needed his services, I was probably screwed anyway.
So what makes a genius a genius? If we are all using the same amount of our brains why are some people born with amazing abilities?
After conception each human has around 200 genetic mutations there's plenty of room to work with in regards to explaining higher intelligence without resorting to an explanation like the 10% brain idea.
It also helps if you weren't dropped on your head.
I remember it like it was yesterday... 1863, The Battle of Gettysburg. It was a humid day, heat exhaustion causing our boys to drop like flies. Johnny and I were approaching the yanks from our right flank. Perspiration was dripping from our gaunt, worn out faces. Our 1861 Springfield muskets were of no use to us now, as they had jammed up earlier that day - now we only had our bare hands and our determination.
As we approached a clearing, Johnny began convulsing violently, followed with a piercing yell. I couldn't let him give away our position so I did what any battle hardened soldier would have have done in that scenario. I
To be continued...
This whole article is based on a failed understanding of the claim. The real claim (as I've heard it in the past) is that we only use 10% (or less) of our brain's potential capacity. Consider the abilities of autistic savants, those with photographic memories and other highly gifted individuals. Although such individuals often suffer from various tradeoffs that typically come with such abilities (such as emotional instability), they do hint at what certain parts of the brain are truly capable of, depending on the wiring. Such capacity remains unrealized in the vast majority of the population, which normally exhibits only a small fraction of that potential.
LOL. Be careful asking that one or you'll get accused of being a creationist. In reality, evolutionary has no answer for that question, for our brains are outrageously overqualified for the basic tasks of survival. Why indeed?
the quote would only sound like a creationist one if you disregard the point. an oxygen hungry brain that only runs at 10% capacity, weather your talking about overall usage or "effective" use, would be selected against in evolutionarily... mutations that increase the brain efficiency or reduce brain size would be favored. And evolution doesn't plan ahead, your not going to see a high capacity brain evolve on the 'off chance' that it may be useful several thousand years in the future.
@ Dave - I agree. I've never heard it as 90% doesn't do anything. It's that your brain has the capacity to learn so much more than one person does in a life time.
Here's a link to the wikipedia article on "10% use of the brain". No one with any knowledge of how a brain works has ever believed this nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_brain_myth
DaveB001:The mental feats performed by autistic savants are only a part of normal brain function. As you point out, these individuals often lack emotional and social skills, which are also brain functions. Rather than showing the "potential" all of us have for perfect memory or mathematical calculations, these persons seem to have brains optimized for a single function at the expense of other abilities. It's sort of a like a racing car, optimized for speed and maneuverability at the expense of economy, safety, comfort and the ability to carry passengers and luggage.
My brother-in-law uses only ten percent of his brain.
Then your sibling chose him for other qualities or quantities he poses
The saying you dont use all of your brain has nothing to do with autonomous functions. It only has to do with how much of your brain you are actually using to solve problems and get things done, and in that respect we in fact dont use all of our brain. Yet again, another report with supposed experts saying things with no actual meaning or knowledge behind what they are saying, stupid.
Do you have a link to a disputing study or test, or are you just spewing something that seems to make sense to you? Common sense tells us that the sun moves around the Earth, but it doesn't. It took generations of scientific study to learn the way it really works, with constant threats and bickering from the uneducated and superstitious.
Our brains are not overqualified for survival. Most people when stranded in a wilderness with no weapons or equipment of any sort usually end up dying due to lack of survival training. Humans do not just know how to survive like wild animals just know how to survive, humans have to acquire such knowledge first. Without that knowledge most people will die a slow brutal death.
That is natural selection at work. An observant human ought to be able to work out some basics of survival. Those that don't will die. And I am not talking about extreme habitats like the Sahara or Arctic where it would simply be purely an issue of not being equipped for an environment. A wilderness (i.e. jungle, mountain range with vegetation/water, etc) shouldn't kill an adult human. Well, that is unless its an 800lb bear or mountain lion with razor sharp claws and an appetite to boot. I don't have any facts, I just would hope this the case! :D
Please, nobody that uses more than 10% of their brain has ever believed we use only 10% of our brains. I mean, when was there ever any evidence that this was the case? Some guy picked a number out of his backside and people repeated it.
Some do. Some don't.
trazmo
What a bunch of shallow minds out there, of course our Brain is working on all cylinders the only thing but for a very few it has a governor on it, thank God, we are not ready to run full throttle yet, there are a few who have been given a tinybit more and to us they seem like geniuses. Don't wish for more, all the wishing in the world can't prepare us to control it.
may i be excused now?my ten percent is full...
That are brain is bigger than required and we obviously, after reading above comments, don't know how to use it well point to an obvious conclusion. The aliens must have gene spliced us and expected much better results.
What is with people confusing "are" and "our" lately? It's absolutely driving me crazy!
Our you really going crazy? ;)
One word: Politicians.
Have you ever been asked something, and had trouble rememberingit until somebody spoke a few words, then everything came back to you? That's just needing a jumpstart of the memory. On Mythbusters this was one of the myths they busted. They were tested while they were trying to solve a problem, and a lot of their brains were very active. Try this. Get a puzzle like the golf tees and triangle that they sell at Cracker Barrel. While listening to something that is interesting to you, try to solve the puzzle without focusing on it. When you get it right, stop paying attention to what you had been paying attention to. Then work the puzzle while paying attention to it. If you really try you will solve the puzzle in a shorter time than you would if you just focused on it. It works for me.
So that means that kids in the class who struggle to get a "C" in everything they do might be on the verge of being totally stupid? Who whould have ever imagined that. Maybe all the "No child left behind" & "Holding teachers accountable" & "Teachers who get fired for underperforming students" will go away. If a teacher is handed a group of kids that inheritied weak brains genelicially hows it their fault?
Has "would" developed a new homonym besides "wood"? or is that just genelics that you inheritied?
At least Republicans blue dog, and Conservative independents do.. I question anyone saying the Liberals and Progressive use any brains at all.. They wanted Daddy Obama to think for them.
It's because we use all our brains that we support Obama as opposed to believing everything you hear on Faux News.
I suspect our pols use only 10 % of their brains in any case !
I was just about to ask about this glaring omission. If 10% would equate to just above dead... :P