Sick of the "We only use 10% of our brains" myth (God, believe)

[Hueffenhardt]

As a non-practicing, but licensed masters level psychologist, it bugs me when I see people continuing to recite the myth that we use only 10% of our brains. A few people are even trying to use it in this forum to make other unsubstantiated claims.

One thing is for sure, no cognitive neuroscientist (a scientist who study the neural substrates of mental processes), has ever made that claim and they are the ones who would know. Some of what follows comes from: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html

What does 10% of our brains even mean? Does it mean 10% of our brain matter? Functional MRI's show that we use all parts of our brain. We also know that destruction of even small areas of the human brain can have devastating effects on behavior. That is one reason why neurosurgeons must carefully map the brain before removing brain tissue during operations for epilepsy or brain tumors: they want to make sure that essential areas of the brain are not damaged.

Does the saying mean that you would be just fine if 90% of your brain was removed? If the average human brain weighs 1,400 grams (about 3 lb) and 90% of it was removed, that would leave 140 grams (about 0.3 lb) of brain tissue. It is well known that damage to a relatively small area of the brain, such as that caused by a stroke, may cause devastating disabilities. Certain neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's Disease, also affect only specific areas of the brain. The damage caused by these conditions is far less than damage to 90% of the brain.

The saying "Use it or Lose It" seems to apply to the nervous system. During development many new synapses are formed. In fact, some synapses are eliminated later on in development. This period of synaptic development and elimination goes on to "fine tune" the wiring of the nervous system. Many studies have shown that if the input to a particular neural system is eliminated, then neurons in this system will not function properly. This has been shown quite dramatically in the visual system: complete loss of vision will occur if visual information is prevented from stimulating the eyes (and brain) early in development. It seems reasonable to suggest that if 90% of the brain was not used, then many neural pathways would degenerate. However, this does not seem to be the case. On the other hand, the brains of young children are quite adaptable. The function of a damaged brain area in a young brain can be taken over by remaining brain tissue. There are incredible examples of such recovery in young children who have had large portions of their brains removed to control seizures. Such miraculous recovery after extensive brain surgery is very unusual in adults.

For example, an experiment was performed, in which scientists took a normal kitten and put a patch over one eye so the kitten could not receive any input from it as the cat developed. The researchers discovered that the part of the cat's brain that would have been devoted to seeing through the covered eye had been taken over to process info from the seeing eye. The part of the brain that was supposed to process info from the seeing eye also was devoted to that purpose.

Does the saying "we use 10% of our brains" refer to 10% of our brain's potential? Well, in order to say that we only use 10% of our brain's potential, we would need to know what 100% of our brain's potential looks like. How would a cognitive neuroscientist go about determining that?

Some people have amazing abilities because their brains have made it a priority to focus on that ability. Some idiot savants can hear a piece of classical music once and then play it perfectly. Others can remember everything they have ever observed throughout their entire lives. Blind people develop very sensitive hearing, etc. But, there seems to be a trade off. If one devotes more neurons to a particular cause then those same neurons cannot be used for some other cause. So, we can't just take the amazing abilities of every special person, put them all together and say that is the full potential of one brain.

[old_cold]

There's very little to argue against in what you say.
I'd say that what that refers to is that some-to-most of us do not take advantage of the full capability of our brains, whatever that individual capabilty might be.

[Thomas R.]

I find it irritating too, for much the same reasons, even if our religious outlooks are different. (Although the 10% thing I don't think is religious so much as New-Agey pseudoscience)

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

From what I understand about the function of the brain, most of the actually.... processing.... for want of a better word occurs on the surface of it. In fact much of human intelligence is not connected to the physical size of the brain, but the large surface area it has. This is connected to all the folds in the surface which increase the surface area without increasing the actual brain size.

The internals of the brain are connected to things like nutrition and other basic functions of biological life as well as signalling between the brain and the rest of the body.

Is it possible that the "10%" thing refers to this in some way?

[SeekerSA]

Not new agey at all, it has been around for 40 years of my life.

The realizing full potential is probably the reality as likely 10% effort is all that we need to make our way through schools and colleges.

If you google headless chicken, there are accounts of chickens with their heads lopped off and survived with partial brain stem still intact. I think the neurological parts required to control animation and breathing is not that complex. The rest of the cognitive side is complex in the way it collects and assimilates information.

Just how much short term memory becomes long term? Can you remember everything from your youth onwards. I suspect the memories are there and can be extracted via hypnosis and in this sense I do think we have not fully learned to fully utilize this capability.

I also believe we have the ability for mental telepathy but have not learned how to exercise it. It happens and usually by chance. Thinking of something and someone answers you for clarification has happened to me many times. Am I sending out signals w/o being aware of it? I think this does happen and has happened to be on numerous occasions.

Maybe this is how fortune tellers operate by their readings, can they perhaps tap into your memories w/o actually knowing how they do it? There are oodles of evidence of how we are fooled by tricksters/magicians and completely miss the gorilla standing in the same room as the card trickster. The same mind control is used by religious folk.

If some of our memories can only be accessed via hypnotism, why do we not all have the ability of total recall? Is is perhaps like the drone of city noise that we no longer have the ability to isolate sounds of a particular prey's call?

We probably use less of our brains than we should. Take calculators and compare them to that math guy that can teach you to do complex calculations in your head. We have invented machines to communicate long distance and as such never evolved this possible ability of telepathy to our advantage.

So I would go with the myth that we only use 10% but that meaning the 10% of the full potential of the cognitive side. The automatic parts work fine converting odours into smell, nutrients into taste, feelings, hearing and seeing. Just think how aware you really are of your peripheral vision. Before a bug flies into your eye, it will shut w/o any need for your deliberation. Imagine that you could utilize your peripheral vision for the full panoramic effect. Your vision does this and fills in the missing pieces in your blind spot w/o you being aware you have a blind spot.

This is what I believe folk mean when we talk of only using 10%.

[MysticPhD]

Good post, Hueff because it is misunderstood. But the misunderstanding has to do with the degree to which we exploit our brain's capabilities. Would you consider an illiterate and/or mathematically-untrained person to not be using all of their left brain cognitive capabilities? No . . . we recognize that they are just untrained and unpracticed in those disciplines. It is no different with the right brain disciplines except that we do not routinely expect anyone to be trained in them here in the West . . . nor do we value them as we do the left brain disciplines. But the use or lack of use of the brain's capabilities is the same.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

I have certainly never been shown evidence for telepathy. I have not even been shown models proposing the mechanisms on how it is meant to work. I am aware of the long string of failed experiments to establish the existence of it and of course the still unclaimed prize from the Randi Foundation that is waiting there for anyone who can establish they have such abilities.

Fortune tellers appear to be just charismatic and skilled people who are capable of deductive reasoning from even the smallest queues, coupled with an ability to use vague linguistics to make it appears they are saying something specific about you, but in reality what they are saying can fit to many people for many reasons. Astrology paragraphs in news papers work in much the same way by relying on vague statements which apply to a generally large group of people.... each of whom it is hoped will think "Wow it seems like this person is writing about me!!!" and be fooled into thinking this validates the claims of astrology.

In short I simply am entirely unaware of any evidence at all supporting the claims of mental powers or fortune telling, but I am more than aware of the tricks and methodologies used by people who claim abilities in those fields.

[SeekerSA]

Nozz

My belief that telepathy may exist is based on many occasions where I have either my wife answer a question I was forming in my mind in period of silence, or my son responding to a me shouting to him in his room and he walks into mine and say yes dad even though I said nothing and was only thinking calling him. (usually to get me a beer out the fridge )

I have never willfully done this but it tends to happen spontaneously. How this happens I do not know but it does.

If there is a way to control this, that would be cool. As for the fortune tellers, I merely suggested that this MAY be how they tap into folk's minds. I have no first hand experience but have read some real crazy stuff. Of course that is hearsay.

I would equate this to the same as animal instincts wrt to danger. Remember the Tsunami and all the animals headed inland, who told them there was a wave coming?

I may be still a bit woo in this area but it fascinates me.

[Chango]

I don't know, I've been posting here for 4 years now and I'm pretty sure I've witnessed enought empirical evidence to make a strong argument that 10% stat is WAY too high.

[MysticPhD]

We would not think anything of the ability to "magically" know the height of a structure without directly measuring it (using the LEARNED discipline of Trigonometry in mathematics). But we routinely pooh-poo "magically" knowing the existence of God through the LEARNED discipline of meditation.