Barry L. Beyerstein of the Brain Behavior Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver explains.
Whenever I venture out of the Ivory Tower to deliver public lectures about the brain, by far the most likely question I can expect as the talk winds up is, "Do we really only use 10 percent of our brains?" The look of disappointment that usually follows when I say it isn't so strongly suggests that the 10-percent myth is one of those hopeful shibboleths that refuses to die simply because it would be so darn nice if it were true. I'm sure none of us would turn down a mighty hike in brainpower if it were attainable, and a seemingly never-ending stream of crackpot schemes and devices continues to be advanced by hucksters who trade on the myth. Always on the lookout for a "feel-good" story, the media have also played their part in keeping the myth alive. A study of self-improvement products by a panel of the prestigious National Research Council, Enhancing Human Performance, surveyed an assortment of the less far-fetched offerings of the "brain booster" genre and came to the conclusion that (alas!) there is no reliable substitute for practice and hard work when it comes to getting ahead in life. This unwelcome news has done little, however, to dissuade millions who are comforted by the prospect that the shortcut to their unfulfilled dreams lies in the fact that they just haven't quite found the secret to tap this vast, allegedly unused cerebral reservoir.
Why would a neuroscientist immediately doubt that 90 percent of the average brain lies perpetually fallow? First of all, it is obvious that the brain, like all our other organs, has been shaped by natural selection. Brain tissue is metabolically expensive both to grow and to run, and it strains credulity to think that evolution would have permitted squandering of resources on a scale necessary to build and maintain such a massively underutilized organ. Moreover, doubts are fueled by ample evidence from clinical neurology. Losing far less than 90 percent of the brain to accident or disease has catastrophic consequences. What is more, observing the effects of head injury reveals that there does not seem to be any area of the brain that can be destroyed by strokes, head trauma, or other manner, without leaving the patient with some kind of functional deficit. Likewise, electrical stimulation of points in the brain during neurosurgery has failed so far to uncover any dormant areas where no percept, emotion or movement is elicited by applying these tiny currents (this can be done with conscious patients under local anesthetic because the brain itself has no pain receptors).
The past hundred years has seen the advent of increasingly sophisticated technologies for listening in on the functional traffic of the brain. The goal of behavioral neuroscience has been to record electrical, chemical and magnetic changes in brain activity and to correlate them with specific mental and behavioral phenomena. With the aid of instruments such as EEGs, magnetoencephalographs, PET scanners and functional MRI machines, researchers have succeeded in localizing a vast number of psychological functions to specific centers and systems in the brain. With nonhuman animals, and occasionally with human patients undergoing neurological treatment, recording probes can even be inserted into the brain itself. Despite this detailed reconnaissance, no quiet areas awaiting new assignments have emerged.
All told, the foregoing suggests that there is no cerebral spare tire waiting to be mounted in service of one's grade point average, job advancement, or the pursuit of a cure for cancer or the Great American Novel. So, if the 10-percent myth is that implausible, how did it arise? My attempts to track down the origins of the 10-percent myth have not discovered any smoking guns, but some tantalizing clues have emerged (more are recounted in the references below). 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." Undoubtedly, the biggest boost for the self-help entrepreneurs came when the famous adventurer and journalist Lowell Thomas attributed the 10-percent-of-the-brain claim to William James. Thomas did so in the preface he wrote, in 1936, to one of the best-selling self-help books of all time, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. The myth has never lost its steam since.
See what we're tweeting about
30 Comments
Add CommentSo the myth stems from some psychologist's words being misconstrued. I always thought that it was supposed to be that humans could ony use a maximum of ten percant of their brain AT A TIME while they tend to use an average of three percent at a time. This seems like it may be more a matter of say multi-tasking or dividing attantion more efficiently rather than a matter of just sheer magnitude of brain use. I have no idea if this is true, but it does seem to t least explain away the reasoning that the myth is false because the entire brain is programed to do something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIm totally agreed with this perception, is the potential of each of us that has to developed and not an unused part of the brain or intelligence
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEdward Kelly and associates, in their intriguing book "Irreducible Mind," talk extensively about James's interest in variations in human "performance" that still seem, to some extent, to defy available logical or neurologically based explanations. It may be that citations of James may be related to these interests of his, and not to a simplistic "percent of the brain" belief. More like, to James, the brain didn't seem to be able to account for everything that seems to be part of the "mind."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think you are right about only being able to use 10% of your brain AT A TIME in reference to multitasking and such...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisheres an article I found that explains it
http://www.themanitoban.com/science-technology/we-only-use-9-our-brains-study
I'm looking at the CPU monitor on my server right now, and it's somewhere between 0 and 3 percent utilization. I guess I could have gotten away with a 386!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe it's not the best analogy. Let's see a human brain negotiate TCP/IP traffic, decode video and audio, fulfill http requests, monitor input from multiple sources, while updating 1,310,720 32-bit pixels over 100 times per second... all at once.
Now that I think about it, I'm kind of upset. I'm going to ask Intel for a 97% refund.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJoking aside, I encourage anyone who believes that people only utilize 10% of their brains to go ahead and remove the extra 90%.
Hi. I read somewhere where someone (how precise am I?) likened the under utilised human brain ( if indeed it is) to the peacock's tale. ie an apparently expensive piece of unnecessary development driven by sexual selection.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is bogus cause we only use 10 persent of are brain. did you go to school? it was on are you smarter than a fith grader. get your fact straigh or get off the enternet!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisget your facts straight we only use 10 percent of are brain!!!!! as we slowly become more intellagent (i think i spelled that wrong) over the years. we used far less of are brain in the cave man part of time. but if we only use 10 percent of are brain, it makes me wonder what percent of an animal's brain an animal uses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi swear you only used one percent of your brain when writting this bogus!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSurely to say we "use only 10% of our brain" means we have to know what 100% is...well do we?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyour article says the myth of 10% is not true, but gives no insight or further scientific evidence for how much of the brain we are using...how about some real information instead of debunking myths, which any of us can do with ease and the sound of academic highbrow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually... the human brain has vastly more computational power than any server on the planet. In fact, in a recent article from Popular Mechanics, the largest computer on the planet uses over 1 million watts and can only perform 1/64 of the computations of the human visual cortex. Let alone the rest of the brain. They estimate that it will take at least 20 more years to be able to build a computer than can compute as much as the human brain. And it will use about 1 BILLION watts. Something the human brain does at 20 watts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's a thought for you all... Do you all know what a hemispherectomy is? That's where literally one half (left or right) of the brain is removed. Usually in children with severe epilepsy. The remaining half of the brain will assume the functions of the missing half. These people go on to lead very normal lives. So, wouldn't logic dictate that there is unneeded parts of our brains? After all, if half can go missing and no one notice...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe brain of young children are quite adaptable. The function of a damaged brain
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisarea in a young brain can be taken over by remaining brain tissue. There are incredible examples of such a recovery
in young children who have had large portions of their brains removed to control seizures. such miraculous
recovery after brain surgery is very unusual in adults.
It seems another misconception we must correct is that most readers of Scientific American articles are able to utilise the portions of their brains responsible for spelling, grammar and punctuation. Indeed the evidence is here that a functional cognitive centre is something of an unexpected blessing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the largest computer on the planet uses over 1 million watts and can only perform 1/64 of the computations of the human visual cortex"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat argument is imbecilic, as it's based on the following assumptions: a) the brain uses the same physical mechanisms to function as a 1/0 binary transistor computer (erm false last time I looked) and b) the brains uses actual numbers, math and trigonometry to work out what sensory input means - I doubt it. You cannot directly compare a brain to a computer!
"There are incredible examples of such a recovery in young children who have had large portions of their brains removed to control seizures. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell that just depends on your definition of "recovery". If you were to compare the entirety of their functional potential with someone with a normal brain, you may find differences. Just because they can walk, talk and go on to be Prime Minister... actually there you go, having a half a brain is pre-requisite for that. But seriously, if you actually knew a child like that, I'm sure you would detect subtle differences between them and other people. Who knows, maybe it would be an improvement over default human behaviour.
"The remaining half of the brain will assume the functions of the missing half. These people go on to lead very normal lives."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo what.. that shows that we don't necessarily *need* our entire brain to live a "normal life" (ie. go to work, eat, watch the telly and have dysfunctional relationships) but it doesn't mean half a brain's potential = an entire brain's potential.
Show me someone with a brainectomy who is also a high achiever on par with the creme of whole-brained people, and then you can use the words "full recovery". Otherwise it doesn't mean much.
"your article says the myth of 10% is not true, but gives no insight or further scientific evidence for how much of the brain we are using...how about some real information instead of debunking myths, which any of us can do with ease and the sound of academic highbrow."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's the whole point. Use your brain. You don't have to be highbrow to say "we don't know enough about the brain to determine 'how much' of it is being used in general." Therefore the simple truth is the 10% thing is BUNK. Not because we know different, but because *we don't know at all*. Nobody can say. It's a myth. It's debunked because whomever said it couldn't possibly have known, and we still don't know. Get it now?
I heard that an average human throughout their entire live's only use about 40 to 50 percent of their brain for a wide variety of activities and emotions. I believe and strongly back-up that if you remove any part of the brain matter....it is merely a reaction, a downfall to any organ an average human has. If you remove your spleen it truely isnt necessary but it will have lasting effect's on your body (major or not THEY ARE STILL THERE!!!) I am only a freshman in high school and going for a degree in something that is totally irrelavant to this subject, but I have always had a great interest in this subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I heard that an average human throughout their entire live's only use about 40 to 50 percent of their brain for a wide variety of activities and emotions."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBe careful forming beliefs from things people say without proper evidence. Especially from Fox News.
The bottom line is nobody knows how the brain works. We don't know how dreams work, or how memory works, how the brain does mathematics or how it forms ideas.
All we know about the brain is that certain parts of it help control certain functions, because when they're damaged or given electrical shocks, we can see the effects. I love neurology too, but it's a very very young science. We've only begun to poke around. So anyone saying "we use x% of our brain" doesn't know - because nobody knows.
But it's fascinating.. check these out. Anything by VS Ramachandran is awsome. And he has a great voice. :)
http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
That's real science.
Do you realize that you misspelt our, straight, and internet?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe use 100% of our brain. Our brain handles not only our thought process but also the regulation of necessary and involuntary body functions like heartbeat, breathing, etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI assume you were joking but you say "Let's see a human brain negotiate TCP/IP traffic, decode video and audio, fulfill http requests, monitor input from multiple sources, while updating 1,310,720 32-bit pixels over 100 times per second..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan our brains do any of this? Only ALL THE TIME! Our brains are constantly bombarded by multiple inputs (sound, sight, smells, temperature, touch, taste, etc.) All of this input gets decoded and coded by the association cortex and put into useful data (both conscious and subconscious). At the same time it is also maintaining our body's metabolic state (CO2, O2, blood sugar, protein, etc.) through various chemoreceptors and baroreceptors making adjustments as needed. It also does this while using our brain for conscious thought or performing intentional motor movement! The sheer amount of information processed during while I type this response will not be paralleled by a computer in the comprehensible future.
Using simple PET scan activity as an indicator of brain usage only indicates the spatial volume of the brain that is used. It says little about the efficiency of the activity relative to functional brain capacity. Regional e-stim studies of the brain show repeatedly that long dormant memories not available to the person can be recalled by electrical stim in memory regions... What if our brains did not lose access to this stored data/expereince, but could maintain an organized index of the memories so that they could be sorted so that ALL relevant memories and experiences could be applied to current life situations? A great example of this is the 'iceberg model' of language acquisition - where 90% of our vocab is 'under the surface' (ie used only in listening/understanding) while only about 10% of what we "know" can be used in functional language dialogue. I'm not arguing for a 10% figure (or any other figure) of brain usage. Simply arguing what anybody over 50 or anyone who has learned multiple languages knows by experience. We lose access to our memory data - and we cannot recall it at will - though the data may occur to us at a time when we don't particularly need it... I think this common human experience is the issue that people feel is evidence of functioning substantially below full capacity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust thought I would like to throw out my comment about this. Who cares if the 10% brain usage is true or not, we should live believing it is a true. Just by believing it is true can be beneficial. People might thrive to learn and study to unlock their brain full potential which could lead into advancements in anything. Rather then just telling people that we are limited. "Sometimes all it takes is motivation to make something happen." The computer vs the human brain is not even a close battle. Computers are very dumb, like MOST people know. It is all instructions that the human brain creates. Computers can't even make their own decisions without a HUMAN telling it how to make a decision and when to make the decision. It is a human brain that tells the computer how interpret data and the human brain that ultimately created computers mechanically and software.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that most people do only use 10% of their brains but not in the way you think. Can you dilate your pupils on command? Can you control how fast your heartbeats? Can you release adrenalin at will? Some people can do this but not all people can. Why? Because they USE a part of the brain that the average person does not use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk...number 1 you spelled internet wrong. Secondly you are obvious not educated if you are making some remark about something you obviously don't know about! Maybe you should USE the internet and do some of your own research. If we only used 10% of our brains then why is it that everyone who has a stroke suffers some form of damage?? If this myth was true, you would have 90% of your brain to damage with no effects. You can see that brain activity is all throughout your brain using brain- imaging techniques. You, my friend, maybe be the small percentage of people who only use 10% of their brain. Do some research before you start putting people down in a subject you know NOTHING about! Thank you :D
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistiun5
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are the idiot in this matter. You spelled intelligent wrong along with internet. So you are telling me that what you see on a stupid TV show is more valid than actual neurological science! The person who wrote this sounds way more intelligent than you! If we only used 10% of our brain, then stroke victims or people who suffered brain damage would have 90% of their brain to damage before something that we could actually see happened! If this is true then why do a majority of stroke victims and all brain damaged accidents effect something like speech or motor skills! You need to get your facts straight before putting people down regarding a subject you OBVIOUSLY know nothing about. You should USE the internet and do some research also. I think the side of the brain that has to do with common sense is missing out of yours!! I'm sorry to inform you, but you are NOT smarter than a 5th grader!!!