tronvillain

The "we only use 10% of our brains" statement is a total myth, and a pretty old one at that.

It would make sense that we have a reserve, except that there is absolutely evidence that there is a reserve.

While the computer/mind analogy may not be too bad, the computer/brain analogy is absolutely terrible. The brain is a massively parallel device that uses the same medium for computation as it does for memory - in other words, it is nothing like a computer.

It seems quite likely that the brain can be rewired so that roughly same job can be done with fewer neurons or by different neurons, but that has nothing to do with the "10% Myth". Do people with a small percentage of their brain tissue actually have a brain that operates as well as those of people with all of their brain tissue? Perhaps, but then their neurons might die faster, or they might have subtle deficits not directly connected with IQ.

MrDarwin

Yes, that old 10% myth is certainly persistent. Funny thing is, nobody seems to know where it came from in the first place.

If anybody believes it is not a myth, then please post a link or two for the rest of us to some articles supporting the 10% figure. That number had to come from somewhere, right? That number has to be based on somebody or other's research, right? Because otherwise somebody just pulled the number out of the air, with absolutely nothing to back it up.

parkdalian

Yes, I agree that it is a myth because of the 10 percent figure. But I also think people are on thin ice when they claim one hundred percent use or any other exact figure. One hundred percent brain use is just as an extraordinary claim as 5 percent or 10 percent.

Part of the problem is we simply don't know and the other part is what, precisely, are we saying when we say "we use x percentage of our brains".

I used the loose analogy to merely illustrate the basic principle that having a reserve of any resource is better than not having one, and not how the brain works. IOW, if you like to use pencils and often lose pencils, you like to have an abundance of pencils.

That is the point I'm trying to make. Since greater brain weight has been positively correlated to greater longevity and faster recovery of drug addicts, we obviously need a high percentage of our neurons. The people studied by Lorber were young adults in ~1980. It would be more informative to know what happened to those people in a follow-up study.

Veil of Fire

"Brain imaging research techniques such as PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) clearly show that the vast majority of the brain does not lie fallow."

Out of four pages of laughing at people who don't think like him, he gives ONE SENTENCE of evidence refuting the original claim, and doesn't even back it up. He obviously could have EASILY backed it up with a hard fact/link/whatever, but he's above that sort of thing.

I disagree with his "100%" premise, I disagree with his methodology (namely, NONE), and I take great offense that he thinks I'm a moron just because I don't buy into his logical fellatio.

Gurdur

The main points here have been already mentioned - massive parallel processing, memory etc..

Just a bit more:
There is no real reserve in the brain, yet there is some potential for translocation of processing within the brain (remapping of limb control, for example), and in some cases neurons work overtime to make up for losses - e.g. in Parkinson's disease, where the remaining specialized neurons (roughly 5 % of the original number, the rest having died off) attempt to do the whole job.

AS for suddenly activating the whole brain at once, all it would give you is sensory overload and epilepsy. Not good, and certainly no gain in "I.Q.".

MrDarwin

Hmmm, you could easily prove him wrong by backing up your objections with a hard fact/link/whatever, or perhaps you're above that sort of thing.

Veil of Fire

Fallacy: Burden of Proof.

HE'S making the claim that we use 100% of our brains, HE has to back it up. It's not up to me to DISprove him, it's up to him to prove HIMSELF.

Or do you believe that Creationism can be proven by poking holes in Evolution, too?

Answerer

Well guys, since 10% usage of our brain is a myth, how do it come about by the way? Why did so many people believe in it?

[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: Answerer ]</p>

Liquidrage

<a href="http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-myth2" target="_blank">http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-myth2</a>

Christopher Lord

the 10% myth may have arisin from MRI scans of the brain in action. (*edit or at least perpetuated, since it does seem older than MRI tech)

The parts with increased bloodflow at any one time rarely exceed 10% of the volume of the skull, and if it does spread out, concentrated areas of blood also thin out.

Of course, this says nothing about the actual activity of the neurons. It may simply indicate where nural cascades are focusing, requiring constant food.

The 10% idea is also refuted by the fact that monkies staring at a bullseye for hours can then have their visual cortex developed like film, and a crude image formed. the visual cortex in monkies is half their brain! Just opening your eyes sets a huge subset of your brain ablaze with activity.

But, the computer analogy does hold up somewhat for supporting the 10% myth, and is one reason I hold reservations about saying it is total myth. Although a computer is serial, it can only deliver a portion of its power to any set of transistors at the same time. Old CPU's could only keep a very thin trace of transistors lit up at any one moment.
Newer chips, however, fight this inefficency by being staged and pipelined. This lets the chip enlarge the working set of transistors from under 1% up to 5-20% or more at any one time. But if all of them lit up at the same moment, it doesnt matter what kind of fan is on there, that chip is going up in smoke. Lucky for us (and the poor chips) we can't push chip-level efficency much futher than where its at now. Bottlenecks and bus speeds limit a cpu to very low transistor usage patterns, even at '100% utilization' as reported by windows.

Likewise, the brain may simply not have the nurishment infrastructure required to keep the whole brain at 100% computation all the time.

If the 10% myth has any merit, it would be most likely caused by blood flow limitations, much like a CPU can only keep a subset of its transistors active at any-one time.

But even so, that would not prevent every neuron being active at lower energy usage levels, since unlike computers, a neuron can draw tiny amounts of blood-delivered energy and still operate near peak, thanks to reserves much like those in muscles.

[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: Christopher Lord ]</p>