We Use Less Than 10% Of Our Brain
The “10 percent of the brain myth” is a myth. In reality, we use a fraction of it, surely much less than 10%.
It’s a bit teasing, but it sums up well what I’m about to let you know in this article. I want to give a proper shade answer to this well-known question.
EDIT : I’ve also made a video from this article.
The problem
What’s funny about this one is that everybody seems to have a premade short answer based on what they believe is true or not. Still, It’s not the type of problem that can be fulfilled with a “yes” or “no.”
I think two things can explain why there are so many misconceptions around this issue.
On the one hand, the concern “Do we only use 10% of our brains?” is very poorly asked. Are we talking about 10% of its mass, energy, neurons? Does this apply to a given moment, or a period of time? It’s as ridiculous as asking if you’re using 10% of your computer, or your legs.
On the other hand, I’ve noticed that the answers to this question are often inadequately understood. Both frequent “yes” or “no” responses let free recourse to the interpretation of each. Some will see the brain as the organ, other the intelligence, other the consciousness, the memory, and so on.
“Yes”
You may believe that you’re standing here, right now, using about 10% of your brain. It means that you have an enormous amount of untapped potential. Having potential feels good. Make you believe that you can unlock it, is a powerful leverage to sell.
Marketing
One of the basic principles of marketing is to associate something that we want but cannot have. Everybody wants to be more intelligent. Nobody knows a recipe to become it.
With this belief, being more intelligent is a superpower that feels easier to reach than being as strong as Hulk, mastering lightning like Thor or shooting cobwebs like Spider-Man. Wind vendors had figured that out as early as 1920 with the arrival of the self-help movement.
For instance: In 1929, World Almanac — a US-publisher Journal — brings to the fore a self-help advertisement with the line “There is NO LIMIT to what the human brain can accomplish. Scientists and psychologists tell us we use only about TEN PERCENT of our brainpower.”
Still today
Even today, this belief persists, notably with the aid of successful sci-fi films like Neil Burger’s Limitless (2011) & Luc Besson’s Lucy (2014). According to a survey made in 2013, it’s no less 65% of the Americans think that people use 10% of their brains daily.
The 35% of American that don’t believe it’s true are right. They’re right in the sense that we don’t have a part of our brain quietly waiting to be woken up to make us super-smart.
At least three science-based counter findings prove it:
- The evolution discourages the development of useless anatomical structures, e.g. the appendix. If we only use 10% of our brains, how can we explain its size?
- Imaging techniques like positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) give hard evidences that we use more than 10% of it for all sorts of activity.
- Other things like Microstructural analysis (insert of a tiny electrode to measure the brain activity) or the Synaptic pruning effect (the tendency of the brain cells to degenerate if they are not used) had shown it if it was true.
However, the answer is incomplete. Yes, the actual activity of our brain is higher than 10%, does this mean that we use more than 10% of it?
In fact, the idea at the heart of the question: “Do we use 10% of our brains” has been distorted over time. We attribute it to the founding father of modern psychology, William James.
“Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul’s resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. “ — William James in Letter of William James (1920)
“No” — Virtue Signaling
William James doesn’t tell that we have, on average, 90% of our brain inactive. He says that we’re far from achieving 100% of what we could imagine and realize. Everything that we think or do is just a fraction of what we could potentially think or do — in reality, much less than 10%.
It is in this sense that the answer “no” is wrong, and for me, worst.
“We don’t use 10% of our brain, that’s a myth”, is the typical short and virtuous answer that cuts off all attempts at critical thinking, reflection, shades, and creates one side of the intelligence and one side of the stupid.
I mean, just the name of the Wikipedia page tells a lot about the virtuous reply: “Ten percent of the brain myth”. If you add to that all articles across the web that “debunk” this myth, and you definitively know who is allegedly stupid and who is not.
What is considered to be a virtue today may turn out to be a vice tomorrow.
“In the very course of time,
Every vice has worn the crown of virtue,
Every virtue has been banished as a vice or a crime.”― Sir Richard Francis Burton, The Kasidah
In my opinion, It’s just viewing the problem from one particular angle, not on its entirety.
Knowing that you can’t fly on your own is correct but not useful. What’s exciting is finding a way to fly, this requires to change your view’s angle, have a fresh look at a given problem.
I think there’s a much better way to look at this issue by following the thinking of William James. Indeed, if we see our brain as a tool, how badly we’re misusing it? How much better can it be?
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.” — Albert Einstein
Acquired savant syndrome
Yes, we use only a fraction of our brains. And I think the most astonishing proof of it is the acquired savant syndrome.
This story takes place in 1994:
Imagine. You are a 42 years old orthopedic surgeon. During a thunderstorm, for whatever reason, you decide to make a call from a payphone. Unfortunately. A lightning strike it, and your heart immediately stops.
Weird to say that, but it’s you’re lucky day. The person waiting outside the cabin is a nurse, and without wasting time, she takes you to the nearest hospital.
You came close to death. But you’re awake, and despite some burns and minor memory troubles, everything seems ok. It’s still only after weeks consulting a neurologist, that your life returned to normal.
Well, almost.
In this story, you embodied Tony Cicoria. And what’s missing is the passion for the piano, that he subsequently developed. Tony, who had no particular fondness for the piano, started being obsessed with it.
Within a few years, he was able to play varieties of classical pieces such as Chopin’s Military Polonaise, Op. 40. He even composed and debuted early versions of his self-composed piece, Lightning Sonata. Tony is an acquired savant.
Savants are born with damages to the central nervous system of their left brain, responsible for logic and language. In response, their right brain, where higher memory structures are formed, overcompensates for the lost connections. They are people considered to have exceptional capabilities in a specific area — art, music, calendar calculating, mathematics, and mechanical/spatial — , alongside with some form of a mental disability.
The acquired savant syndrome appears unexpectedly. It touches ordinary persons after a head injury, stroke or other central nervous systems incident. The acquired savant syndrome does not always leave mental disabilities, yet common in born savants.
It’s as if, by some miracle, they had access to savant skills that previously slept out of their consciousness. It’s like fate has given them a cheat code to unlock a few percent of their brain.
Footer notes
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