The 10% Myth and what it implies

in #science7 years ago (edited)

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”We humans are only using 10% of our brain!!!!!!” bla bla bla. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this dumb myth, especially because I thought everyone knows better by now. But Hollywood movies like “Lucy” reinforce this over and over again.

I sometimes wonder why people think it’s a good idea to get their scientific knowledge from the movie industry …

Anyway, yes, it’s a myth and most articles I stumbled upon blamed the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie for it because it says:

Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average person develops only 10 percent of his latent mental ability. Dale Carnegie, by helping business men and women to develop their latent possibilities, created one of the most significant movements in adult education
(Source)

And who is that “Professor William James”? The other culprit everyone blames:

We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. In some persons this sense of being cut off from their rightful resources is extreme.
(Source)

The second quote was from “The Energies of Men” by Prof. James … 1908.

If a myth has that long of a time frame to grow and find its way into everyone’s minds (hehe …), it’s not surprising that it’s hard to get it out of the minds. Especially when it’s such a comforting myth!

If you can tell yourself “people that are smarter than be can use more of their brain, it’s not my fault that I suck!” you won’t want to switch to ”I suck because I don’t put much effort in learning new things.” Not saying everyone can do everything, but you can do a lot if you’re determined enough. @suesa

But why try? Life is so comfortable the way it is!

But enough with the philosophy, you didn’t click this post just for a “this is wrong, now feel bad about your life”.

The 10% myth can be somewhat justified if you look at the brain, this magnificent, misunderstood organ because it’s not completely made out of neurons!

Your brain isn’t just a mass of cells that control your body and store your memory, there are many cells that act as a support system! They’re called “glial cells” (glia = Greek for glue) and for a long time, it was thought that they do … basically nothing. Their name already indicates that early scientists assumed they just act as glue to hold everything together.

But that’s absolutely untrue. In fact, glial cells have multiple functions.

Microglia act as the brain’s immune system, as it’s mostly cut-off from the rest of the body by the blood-brain barrier. Astrocytes take care of the neurons and “feed” them. Oligodendrocytes serve as electric isolation.

And if you take all these cells together, you’ll quickly notice that they’re a huge part of the brain which we don’t use for thinking. So technically we only actively use a small part of our brain. But the part we don’t use can’t be accessed and even if it could, it wouldn’t really change much.

Now, let’s assume, despite everything I just stated above, we were using only 10% of our neurons. Let’s assume evolution somehow totally failed and created something so big that causes so many problems (childbirth is mostly a problem because of our large heads) and then we only use 10% of it.

Right now, our brain uses up about 20% of all the energy our body needs a day. And in contrary to other organs, it always uses a lot of energy. And if energy is low, all reserves are directed to the brain. Your brain would “accept” the death of the rest of a system for it to survive. This is called “the selfish brain”, more about that if you click the according link in my sources.

So imagine you suddenly unlock those magic 90% and achieve 100% capacity (at which you already are if you don’t have a brain injury, can’t say it often enough). You’d also need ten times more energy. Which is … 200% of what your body needs a day?

I don’t even know if you could eat that much AND MORE (pumping it up to almost 300% of your daily calorie intake), because at this point, you’ve only fed your brain, not your body. I’m pretty sure this would mess up your whole organism in no time and you’d die.

And I don’t think you’d be able to think straight in that condition. Not because you have so much more capacity all of sudden but because your brain cells are just dying off because of the lack of nutrition.

Conclusion: Myths like this are dumb and one should think that simply thinking about what they imply debunks them pretty fast.

Conclusion number two: If Hollywood was more scientific, most movies would end after the first 20 minutes because their heroes would just die in some dumb way.

Conclusion number three: I’d watch that

EDIT: Several people only skim the post and think that the last part is the truth and implies we are in fact only using a fraction of our brain. That is not true! It was pure speculation! We use our full brain, 100%.


Sources:

What’s the matter with only exploiting a portion of our gray matter?

Do we only use 10% of our brains?

The selfish brain: competition for energy resources


Pictures taken from pixabay.com

SteemStem

GIF was created for me by @saywha and @atopy , rest of the signature by @overkillcoin

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I am very amazed by the information you have provided in this post. I had this misconception since the early days of my life. Now sorted.

good points, now I can prove everyone wrong at parties who say we only use a small percentage

I am pretty sure some people do use only 10% of their brain :D

[Please don't whip me.]

That may be too generous! 😂

You're definitely right. I know some people, too. Hahaha :)

That's not a fact! hahahaha
...
(puts down the whip, slowly)

It is new year time... come on ;)

Every neuroscientist I know HATES that saying.

My favorite historical explanation during grad school was that when neurology was getting started (late 1800s), it got a big boost during the Russo-Japanese War, because the higher velocity bullets meant that more and more soldiers started surviving head wounds. Those early neurologists quickly mapped out the sensory and motor cortices by the obvious blindness or paralysis following damage to those areas. But the deficits from the higher level association cortices (which are most of the cortex) were much more subtle. They called these 'silent' cortex because they didn't appear to do anything. And the myth was born.

Interesting theory. I was assuming it was because 90% of the brain is used for functions that don't include surface thoughts, and idiots interpreted this as 'people only use 10% of their brain!'

It's real, people do not stop mentioning this, even though it's not true. What is certain is that there is a lot of information that we do not know about our brain and hence the efforts of neuroscientists to try to unveil them

Evolution eliminates everything that is not needed. It would make no sense why brains kept growing if we don't use them.

Conclusion number two: If Hollywood was more scientific, most movies would end after the first 20 minutes because their heroes would just die in some dumb way.

Though this films / shows does not end in 20 minutes. I think the best / competent characters (at the start) dies due to bad luck (Got hit by a sniper, got hit by a mortar, got trapped in an avalanche). Might be a bit morbid but at least most of I posted here more or less has a happy ending (Well in the war movies if you are anti us then probably not a happy ending :p).

Alive (1993 film) - Wikipedia
Band of Brothers (miniseries) - Wikipedia
The Pacific (miniseries) - Wikipedia

Its a bit of a cheat as this stories are based on real life so Hollywood cant to get too artistic on making the film/show.

I sometimes wonder why people think it’s a good idea to get their scientific knowledge from the movie industry …

Lol and I wonder the same way when people say that watching English movies helps you perfect your English skills. :) The fact that a vast majority of internet users get 'knowledge' on almost every topic from Wikipedia and then impose it on people around them getting a superior feeling of 'Greek philosophers resurrected', takes this funny situation to the next level. In their social circles, they are regarded as 'Mountains of knowledge'.

Conclusion number four: Humans think that they use only 10% of their brains because brain is a complex matter and till date, humans have only understood only 10% of it's entire functionalities.

Sum Up: Einstein was not the most genius man of the world. :)

By the way, @suesa, who is this faceless lady in the photo and why is her puppy staring at me? :)

Steem On!

I sometimes wonder why people think it’s a good idea to get their scientific knowledge from the movie industry …


It's because the movie is so much better that the book

Yes, most textbooks are terrible.

I generally lose the direction of the plot about a third to 2 thirds of the way through and it doesn't help when you're instructed to mix the chapters up... say, start with Chapter 4 then go read Chapter 7 then back to Chapter 2. In conjunction with the characters changing all over the place then not showing up in any other part of the book I really get confused.

Just a pic I added to illustrate a boring lifestyle :P

You could have served humanity by not making it faceless. :)

I just realized that this 10% myth is like saying:

"90% of this computer is just a metal case and a bunch of cords and plastic. All of the math happens in the CPU. Imagine how powerful our computers would be if they were all CPU!"

I didn't know about the glial cells. I learn something from you every day.

Best analogy ever

Well I'm just an old town doctor. I did my training in some god-forsaken tropical country. But the fact that our brain can't tolerate even a few seconds of arterial pressure drop seems like proof enough of the fact that it doesn't really have much of a functional reserve... in my south-american country they teach this shit in school. I'm not really aware of the reach of SteemStem but it seems more like Steempopularscience or steem general culture...

... So? Reading the comments, there are obviously enough people who didn't know it. Great that your school didn't fail you :)
And popular science is still science. You don't have to read it if it bores you, steemSTEM has a variety of great writers and I'm sure you will find something that will meet your standards.

I just wanted to give you more visibility so she notices you, ol' friend.

I'm not sure what you expect to happen

A rational and measured response which you gave. My friend is probably just envious. Then he just trying to pick a fight unsuccessfully but I could be wrong.

I'm on vacation, I won't fight for no good reason 😜

Asking why to fight is like asking why leaves fall... it is in their nature... the true question is what is worth fighting for... Nah I was just trying to elicit a response... the lightness of the article upset my tummy a bit but that's all

Ugh we're reaching levels of brown-nosing that shouldn't even be posible