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The 10% of brain myth is the widely perpetuated urban legend that most or all humans only make use of 10% (or some other small percentage) of their brains. It has been misattributed to many people, including Albert Einstein. By association, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.

Though factors of intelligence can increase with training, the popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated", rests more in popular folklore than scientific theory. Though mysteries regarding brain function remain—e.g. memory, consciousness—the physiology of brain mapping suggests that all areas of the brain have a function.

Origin and culture

One possible origin is the reserve energy theories by Harvard psychologists William James and Boris Sidis in the 1890s who tested the theory in the accelerated raising of child prodigy William Sidis to effect an adulthood IQ of 250–300; thus, William James told audiences that people only meet a fraction of their full mental potential, which is a plausible claim. In 1936, American writer Lowell Thomas summarized this idea (in a foreword to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People) by adding a falsely precise percentage: "Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental ability." However, this book was not the first to use the 10% figure, which was already circulating within the self-help movement before then; for example, the book Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain includes a chapter on the ten percent myth which shows a self-help advertisement from the 1929 World Almanac containing the line "There is NO LIMIT to what the human brain can accomplish. Scientists and psychologists tell us we use only about TEN PER CENT of our brain power."

In the 1970s, psychologist and educator Georgi Lozanov, proposed the teaching method of suggestopedia believing "that we might be using only five to ten percent of our mental capacity." The origin of the myth has also been attributed to Dr. Wilder Penfield, the U.S.-born neurosurgeon who was the first director of Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University.

According to a related origin story, the ten percent myth most likely arose from a misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of neurological research in the late 19th century or early 20th century. For example, the functions of many brain regions (especially in the cerebral cortex) are complex enough that the effects of damage are subtle, leading early neurologists to wonder what these regions did. The brain was also discovered to consist mostly of glial cells, which seemed to have very minor functions. Dr. James W. Kalat, author of the textbook Biological Psychology, points out that neuroscientists in the 1930s knew about the large number of "local" neurons in the brain. The misunderstanding of the function of local neurons may have led to the ten percent myth. The myth might have been propagated simply by a truncation of the idea that some use a small percentage of their brains at any given time. In the same article in Scientific American, John Henley, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota states: "Evidence would show over a day you use 100 percent of the brain."

Although parts of the brain have broadly understood functions, many mysteries remain about how brain cells (i.e., neurons and glia) work together to produce complex behaviors and disorders. Perhaps the broadest, most mysterious question is how diverse regions of the brain collaborate to form conscious experiences. So far, there is no evidence that there is one site for consciousness, which leads experts to believe that it is truly a collective neural effort. Therefore, as with James's idea that humans have untapped cognitive potential, it may be that a large fraction of questions about the brain have not been fully answered.

Several books, films, and short stories have been written which perpetuate the "ten percent of brain" belief in society and culture. The "ten percent of brain" myth occurs frequently in advertisements, and is often cited as if it were fact in entertainment media.

Some New Age proponents propagate the "ten percent of brain" belief by asserting that the "unused" ninety percent of the human brain is capable of exhibiting psychic powers and can be trained to perform psychokinesis and extra-sensory perception. There is no scientifically verified body of evidence supporting the existence of such powers.

Analysis

Neurologist Barry Gordon describes the myth as false, adding, "we use virtually every part of the brain, and that the brain is active almost all the time." Neuroscientist Barry Beyerstein sets out seven kinds of evidence refuting the ten percent myth:

1. Studies of brain damage: If 90% of the brain is normally unused, then damage to these areas should not impair performance. Instead, there is almost no area of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. Even slight damage to small areas of the brain can have profound effects.
2. Brain scans have shown that no matter what one is doing, brains are always active. Some areas are more active at any one time than others, but barring brain damage, there is no part of the brain that is absolutely not functioning.
3. The brain is enormously costly to the rest of the body, in terms of oxygen and nutrient consumption. It can require up to 20% of the body's energy—more than any other organ—despite making up only 2% of the human body by weight. If 90% of it were unnecessary, there would be a large survival advantage to humans with smaller, more efficient brains. If this were true, the process of natural selection would have eliminated the inefficient brains. It is also highly unlikely that a brain with so much redundant matter would have evolved in the first place.
4. Brain imaging (neuroimaging): Technologies such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow the activity of the living brain to be monitored. They reveal that even during sleep, all parts of the brain show some level of activity. Only in the case of serious damage does a brain have "silent" areas.
5. Localization of function: Rather than acting as a single mass, the brain has distinct regions for different kinds of information processing. Decades of research have gone into mapping functions onto areas of the brain, and no function-less areas have been found.
6. Microstructural analysis: In the single-unit recording technique, researchers insert a tiny electrode into the brain to monitor the activity of a single cell. If 90% of cells were unused, then this technique would have revealed that.
7. Neural disease: Brain cells that are not used have a tendency to degenerate. Hence if 90% of the brain were inactive, autopsy of adult brains would reveal large-scale degeneration.

Another argument is that, given the historical risk of death in childbirth associated with the large brain size (and therefore skull size) of humans, there would be a strong selection pressure against such a large brain size if only 10% was actually in use.

The myth is "busted" on an October 27, 2010 episode of MythBusters. The hosts used magnetoencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brain of someone attempting a complicated mental task, and found that well over 10% of the brain was used.

See also

• Educational psychology
• List of common misconceptions

References

2. Part 2

1. ^ "Do People Only Use 10 Percent Of Their Brains". Scientific American. 7 February 2008. Retrieved 2008-02-07.
2. University of Oxford (2009, October 16). Juggling Enhances Connections In The Brain. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 30, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091016114055.htm "We've shown that it is possible for the brain to condition its own wiring system to operate more efficiently.'"
3. ^ Radford, Benjamin (8 February 2000). "The Ten-Percent Myth". snopes.com. Retrieved 2006-04-13.
4. Chudler, Eric. "Myths About the Brain: 10 percent and Counting". Archived from the original on 2006-04-02. Retrieved 2006-04-12.
5. "Debunking Common Brain Myths". Retrieved 24 May 2011.
6. "A Shortcut to Distinction". Retrieved 24 May 2011.
7. Beyerstein, Barry L. (1999), "Whence Cometh the Myth that We Only Use 10% of our Brains?", in Della Salla, Sergio (ed.), Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain, Wiley, p. 11, ISBN 978-0471983033
8. Larsen-Freeman, Diane (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Teaching Techniques in English as a Second Language (2nd ed.). Oxford. Oxford University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-19-435574-2.
9. http://lppm.dinus.ac.id/docs/m/Suggestopedia:_How_Does_It_Accelerate_Language_Learning1.pdf
10. "Do we use only 10 percent of our brain?" Psychology Today
11. "Wang, Sam and Aamodt, Sandra (2008-02-02). Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life. ISBN 9781596912830. Retrieved 25 September 2011.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
12. Kalat, J.W., Biological Psychology, sixth edition, Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., 1998, p. 43.
13. "Neuroscience For Kids". Eric H. Chudler, Ph.d(University of Washington, Director of Education and Outreach). Archived from the original on 27 October 2008. Retrieved 14 November 2008.
14. ^ Beyerstein, Barry L. (1999). "Whence Cometh the Myth that We Only Use 10% of our Brains?". In Sergio Della Sala (ed.). Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain. Wiley. pp. 3–24. ISBN 0-471-98303-9.
15. Swaminathan, Nikhil (29 April 2008). "Why Does the Brain Need So Much Power?". Scientific American. Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc. Retrieved 19 November 2010.
16. Carpenter's Human Neuroanatomy, Ch. 1
17. Rosenberg, K.R., "The Evolution of Modern Childbirth" in American Journal of Physical Anthropology 35, 1992, p. 89–124.

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• Urban legends