According to a popular myth, humans supposedly only use 10% of their brains. The origin of this myth is debatable; no one really knows how this myth came to be. One theory is based on an experiment from the 1930s by Karl Spencer Lashley. By removing different parts of rats' brains, Lashley showed that each piece could perform normally under a variety of tests, such as navigating through a maze. This introduced the idea of humans only needing to use a small portion of their brain.
To test this myth, we must first decide on what is meant by "using 10% of you brain". Many people believe that this refers to the capacity, or how much memory can be stored, of the brain. According to PaShawnda Briley, a biology student at Byrn Mawr College, only 5% of neurons in the brain are active at one time, meaning that the whole brain is not used all at once. This suggests that perhaps that only a small percentage of the brain's capacity is used. Briley's biology web report can be found at the Byrn Mawr Website.
On the contrary, "using 10% of the brain" could also refer to using the brain for different tasks, not the capacity level. Different parts of the brain provide different functions. For example, according to Thomas Cleland, a biology professor at UCSD, the visual cortices (the part of the brain that processes what we see) in the brain are directly connected to our eyes, and this section of the brain, the visual cortex, is only used to see things. Cleland confirms what is meant by the 10% myth, "Less than 10% of the cells in our brain are actually neurons (nerve cells) - the rest are
called 'glial cells'. Glial cells perform all kinds of different tasks, from insulating the brains 'wires' to maintaining the brain's chemistry to helping regulate the many connections among neurons (called synapses) in which the memory can be stored. Cleland's full response to this question from "Ask a Scientist" can be found at the Cornell Center for Materials Research website. This myth has been busted; humans do use 100% of their brains in a variety of different tasks, and each part of the brain is uniquely designed to perform that specific function.
called 'glial cells'. Glial cells perform all kinds of different tasks, from insulating the brains 'wires' to maintaining the brain's chemistry to helping regulate the many connections among neurons (called synapses) in which the memory can be stored. Cleland's full response to this question from "Ask a Scientist" can be found at the Cornell Center for Materials Research website. This myth has been busted; humans do use 100% of their brains in a variety of different tasks, and each part of the brain is uniquely designed to perform that specific function.So, the next time you perform a task, such as sitting at this computer, looking at my blog, consider how your brain is being used. If you think about these things every day, you can know how much you really know.
