ive heard this is a misconception, anyone care to explain?
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It is very much a misconception. We use 100% of our brains. Different parts of our brains control different aspects of who and what we are. Parts of our brain control things we are not aware of, like breathing and digestion and other automatic body functions. Only the prefrontal cortex is in charge of our personality, intelligence and language.
If a part of our brain is damaged, even a small part, we can lose major functions, like language or the ability to see or walk. If you study what was done to people who had lobotomies, many lost vital functions after they had them. And that was only a small piece of their prefrontal cortex.
Brains are expensive. Very, very expensive. The more things you pack into them, the more expensive they are.
No organism would dedicate the amount of energy it takes to run a complex brain that does only 10% of what it’s capable of. That would be like designing a computer to use the energy to run an entire mansion with every room lit up but only have it capable of playing minesweeper.
The only vaguely correct part of that would be “at a time”, but even that’s not really true. Humans use 100% of their brain, but may not use it all at once. Close your eyes and your brain doesn’t lose the parts that are dedicated to visual coding and interpretation, but you aren’t using it either. Ergo, “100%” isn’t being used at that particular point, but will be when you open your eyes.
That was before mri scans were a thing, we now know almost everything requires most of your brain to be active at once, as more research is done, scientists will get different answers as to “what % of our brain is used”… there will probably never be a set amount as we’re constantly evolving
I mean it’s pretty self-explanatory. We don’t just use 10% of our brains. That notion is false.
Our brains are constantly working and performing complex functions. It takes a lot just for it to process the light captured by the eyes and turn that into visuals, let alone understand what it is being seen. Same with hearing. The brain is constantly regulating bodily functions and creating consciousness.
Think this way: If you direct your eyes upwards looking at the ceiling, stand on one foot, and sing a song while bringing your finger to your nose, your brain is performing multiple complex functions beyond the ability of most computers. Between creating visuals, remembering the words, remembering the tune, knowing language enough to use the words, making your voice physically work, hearing your voice and interpreting it as sound, understanding language, recognizing the tune as a tune, knowing where your body is in the physical realm enough to touch your nose, interpret nerve stimulation as touch, recognize feel and temperature through touch, all while constantly making tiny adjustments to your posture in order to stay balanced and keeping your heart beating and lungs breathing. Takes way more than 10% of the brain to do all of that. And that’s not even all
Shoot someone in the head. Did you miss the 10% of the brain that matters or does it fuck them up anyway?
Evolution isn’t going to provide something just so maybe one day some super humans can take advantage of it. That’s just not how evolution works.
The statement that we only use 10 percent of our brains is based of an experiment where a monkey had most of its brain removed but it was still able to blink and breathe. It’s a really messed up saying based of a messed up experiment done many decades ago before we had any real understanding of the brain.
I thought that the statement was meant to convey how little of our potential we harness. We can’t all be Leonardo da Vinci or Serena Williams (to name but two random high achievers) but there is so much that we are capable of that is not being tapped into when most of our time is spent at boring jobs and watching tv.
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