Why do we only use roughly 10% of our brains?

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Believe it or not we as humans only use roughly around 10% of our brains. Could it be possible that as we evolve that we learn how to use more of our brains and become smarter or our IQ gets higher?
Just throwing this out there to see what everyone else thinks about this.

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@socrato,

Where does that commonly cited statistic come from? What is the denominator?

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Where does that commonly cited statistic come from? What is the denominator?

The discover magazine. I'll have to find a reference for you online though. I supposes I didn't actually explain well enough. Just ignore the thread for now.

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@socrato,

The issue is that I'd imagine this statistic comes from looking at functional brain imaging, like PET scans. But it ignores the fact that very little of our brain actually is involved in active conscious thought at any given time. A full third of our brain is solely for processing of visual input. Our cerebellum is purely for balance. So I'm not sure that 90% represents brain that we can actually have conscious access to.

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@Aedes,

This has been misinterpreted again and again, and somehow made it as a fact in the public domain. Just like the "fact" that you swallow 6 spiders a year in your sleep and others.

Quote:

One stream leads back to the pioneering American psychologist, William James, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to his voluminous scholarly work, James was a prodigious author of popular articles offering advice to the general public. In these exhortatory works James was fond of stating that the average person rarely achieves but a small portion of his or her potential. I was never able to find an exact percentage mentioned, and James always talked in terms of one's undeveloped potential, apparently never relating this to a specific amount of gray matter engaged. A generation of "positive thinking" gurus that followed were not so careful, however, and gradually "10 percent of our capacity" morphed into "10 percent of our brain.

And the source article

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@Aedes,

As far as i know the 10% of our brains thing is a myth.

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@dominant monad,

dominant_monad wrote:

As far as i know the 10% of our brains thing is a myth.

It is, see my post above.

1 Reply

@Vasska,

did i say it wasn't?

1 Reply

@dominant monad,

dominant_monad wrote:

did i say it wasn't?

My bad, seemed like a question. Reference to the article was just proof of it.

1 Reply

@Vasska,

The question may be, "do people even use 10% of their brains?" LOL! But there seems to be some negative connotations if we use that assumption though. If we only use 10% of our brains, some may use more or less than others. Some become the "smarter" set and so on. It creates a very ugly normative framework. Strikes of cranium measuring to me.

Also, about the spiders crawling into your mouth at night, thats why I duct tape my mouth shut when I sleep. They all laughed at me, but I showed them a thing or two. It's all fun and games until BAM!!! Arachnophobia...a crappy B quality early nineties movie with the late John Goodman. Is he dead? No, but his career is.

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@VideCorSpoon,

VideCorSpoon wrote:

Also, about the spiders crawling into your mouth at night, thats why I duct tape my mouth shut when I sleep. They all laughed at me, but I showed them a thing or two.

Must be fun being in the asylum :rolleyes:

Anyhow, i think we cannot measure knowledge only by the amount of brain used. Some people might not be as smart as you, but they might be able to handle other things better, its another form of intelligence.

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@Vasska,

Asylums are ok... although... theres a shortage of chairs. LOL!

Also, there was an interesting joke a heard? and I am racking my brains trying to figure out where I heard it, but here it is.

"A doctor takes his first rounds at an asylum. He goes up to the first patient he sees and asks, "Who do you think you are?" The patient replied, "I, sir, am Napoleon!" "And how do you know you are Napoleon," asked the doctor. The patient replied, "Because God told me so." Then, from across the room, another patient yelled, "I... DID... NOT!!!"

But you cannot completely discount the physical factor (you don't discount it, but this is just in general). There are some diseases which effect memory and motor function.

The brain is a hard drive, but not the software. But occasionally, hard drives crash and the software differs. Curse you MS Vista!!!

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@VideCorSpoon,

VideCorSpoon wrote:

Asylums are ok... although... theres a shortage of chairs. LOL!

Also, there was an interesting joke a heard? and I am racking my brains trying to figure out where I heard it, but here it is.

"A doctor takes his first rounds at an asylum. He goes up to the first patient he sees and asks, "Who do you think you are?" The patient replied, "I, sir, am Napoleon!" "And how do you know you are Napoleon," asked the doctor. The patient replied, "Because God told me so." Then, from across the room, another patient yelled, "I... DID... NOT!!!"

But you cannot completely discount the physical factor (you don't discount it, but this is just in general). There are some diseases which effect memory and motor function.

The brain is a hard drive, but not the software. But occasionally, hard drives crash and the software differs. Curse you MS Vista!!!

Is it wrong of me to diagnose you with the Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder? Seen your use of language and heavily editing in your post, that's right! I saw your original posting first! :rolleyes:

Anyhow, we cannot discount the physical factor (half working brains for sale! buy 2 for the price of 1!) but we can differ between what people can or cannot do. The troublemakers are only the people with deficiencies (like autism and the likes) and people who got other problems (parkinson, senility etc etc).

There still is a huge amount of people (although outnumbered by the less fortunate) who are smart, and keep the world turning. But so does also the garbage man. It's a though cookie, and i don't like to admit it myself much, but everyone is smart in one way or another. Likeable is something else.

About the hard drive thing. I think mine is rattling at the moment ^^.

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@VideCorSpoon,

I know that I read the discover magazine but I've never read an article about how much of the brain that we use. Although I do not doubt that there would be an article in there but no offence or anything socrato but I think you misinterpreted the information.

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@socrato,

socrato wrote:

Believe it or not we as humans only use roughly around 10% of our brains. Could it be possible that as we evolve that we learn how to use more of our brains and become smarter or our IQ gets higher?
Just throwing this out there to see what everyone else thinks about this.

Here is something that everyone will benefit when they go to this website. It will talk about how using 10% of our brains is just a myth. Also Einstein said something about this himself but it was just a misinterpretation.

Neuroscience For Kids - 10% of the Brain Myth

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@socrato,

socrato;18966 wrote:

Believe it or not ...

I don't believe it! As per the earlier post, it is just a common myth. According to wikipedia it probably first arose when early EEGs were done and it was found that approx 10% of neurons or cortical matter was active at any one time.

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@socrato,

where did you get this information from?

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@socrato,

With people these days, seems like they are.

1 Reply

@rambo phil,

bundo wrote:

where did you get this information from?

rambo wrote:

With people these days, seems like they are.

Both of you; the topic died 15-10-2008. Meaning it's been well over 2 months dead, nearing a third. As explained in several postings it is a common myth caused by misinterpretation and pseudoscience.

Please don't start to dig up old topics that have no relevance anymore. Think before you type and keep the forum clean.

0 Replies

@Vasska,

Vasska wrote:

This has been misinterpreted again and again, and somehow made it as a fact in the public domain. Just like the "fact" that you swallow 6 spiders a year in your sleep and others.

And the source article

That William James wouldn't happen to be the prodigy William James Sidis who published results in some of his father's(an eminent psychologist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) work? I am familiar with the writing of Boris Sidis who wrote quite a bit about this sort of thing, though it always seemed like he had trouble getting to a systematic method to using the other 90 percent of our potential. Something about latent energy that can be called upon with practice. William James was a man who could learn a language in a day, gave a presentation on the mathematics of four dimential geometry at harvard at age 11 and was a professor in his teens among other things. Later in life he showed extreme hatred towards his father and published his works anonamously, working odd jobs and assumed to be a burnout. Interesting story.

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Why do we only use roughly 10% of our brains?

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