TheRedArchive

~ archived since 2018 ~

Is it true you only use 10% of your brainpower?

Eric Barker
June 3, 2012

No, it’s not true. But don’t feel bad about believing it:

Via 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior:

In one study, when asked âAbout what percentage of their potential brain power do you think most people use?,â a third of psychology majors answered 10% (Higbee & Clay, 1998, p. 471). Fifty-nine percent of a sample of college-educated people in Brazil similarly believe that people use only 10% of their brains (Herculano-Houzel, 2002). Remarkably, that same survey revealed that even 6% of neuroscientists agreed with this claim!

Despite how common the belief is, it’s false:

Neurologist Barry Gordon describes the myth as laughably false, adding, “we use virtually every part of the brain, and that [most of] the brain is active almost all the time”.[1] Neuroscientist Barry Beyerstein sets out seven kinds of evidence refuting the ten percent myth:[10]

  • Studies of brain damage: If 90% of the brain is normally unused, then damage to these areas should not impair performance. Instead, there is almost no area of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. Even slight damage to small areas of the brain can have profound effects.
  • Evolution: The brain is enormously costly to the rest of the body, in terms of oxygen and nutrient consumption. It can require up to 20% of the body’s energyâmore than any other organâdespite making up only 2% of the human body by weight.[11][12] If 90% of it were unnecessary, there would be a large survival advantage to humans with smaller, more efficient brains. If this were true, the process of natural selection would have eliminated the inefficient brains. By the same token, it is also highly unlikely that a brain with so much redundant matter would have evolved in the first place.
  • Brain imaging: Technologies such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow the activity of the living brain to be monitored. They reveal that even during sleep, all parts of the brain show some level of activity. Only in the case of serious damage does a brain have “silent” areas.
  • Localization of function: Rather than acting as a single mass, the brain has distinct regions for different kinds of information processing. Decades of research have gone into mapping functions onto areas of the brain, and no function-less areas have been found.
  • Microstructural analysis: In the single-unit recording technique, researchers insert a tiny electrode into the brain to monitor the activity of a single cell. If 90% of cells were unused, then this technique would have revealed that.
  • Neural disease: Brain cells that are not used have a tendency to degenerate. Hence if 90% of the brain were inactive, autopsy of adult brains would reveal large-scale degeneration.

And:

In the October 27, 2010 episode of MythBusters, the hosts used magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brain of someone attempting a complicated mental task. Finding that well over 10% was active at once, they declared the myth “busted”.

So how did the belief come about?

Via 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior:

So, if the 10% myth is so poorly supported, how did it get started? Attempts to track down this mythâs origins havenât uncovered any smoking guns, but a few tantalizing clues have materialized (Beyerstein, 1999c; Chudler, 2006; Geake, 2008). One stream leads back to pioneering American psychologist William James in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In one of his writings for the general public, James said he doubted that average persons achieve more than about 10% of their intellectual potential. James always talked in terms of underdeveloped potential, never relating it to a specific amount of the brain engaged. A slew of âpositive thinkingâ gurus who followed werenât as careful, though, and â10% of our capacityâ gradually morphed into â10% of our brainâ (Beyerstein, 1999c). Undoubtedly, the biggest boost for the self-help entrepreneurs came when journalist Lowell Thomas attributed the 10% brain claim to William James.

Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.

 
Related posts:

25 research-based ways to increase your intelligence

5 things you didn’t know about your brain

Can alcohol be good for your brain?


Tags:
Posted In:
Written By: Eric Barker

Post Details

TheRedArchive is an archive of Red Pill content, including various subreddits and blogs. This post has been archived from the blog bakadesuyo.

bakadesuyo archive

Download the post

Want to save the post for offline use on your device? Choose one of the download options below:

Post Information
Title Is it true you only use 10% of your brainpower?
Author Eric Barker
Date June 3, 2012 9:17 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Blog bakadesuyo
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/blog/bakadesuyo/is-it-true-you-only-use-10-of-your-brainpower.14153
https://theredarchive.com/blog/14153
Original Link https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2012/06/is-it-true-you-only-use-10-of-your-brainpower/
You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

© TheRedArchive 2024. All rights reserved.
created by /u/dream-hunter