The 10% Myth
It’s a statement that crops up frequently: humans only use 10% of their brain. I’ve seen it on ads, television shows, movies, books, and comic books — just to name a few. It’s an intriguing idea, but one that is utterly wrong.
There’s some debate where the idea that we “only use 10% of our brain” originated. Some blame it on misunderstood statements from physicist Albert Einstein or anthropologist Margaret Mead. Popular psychologists in the early twentieth century seem to have popularized the idea as well. For instance, famed psychologist William James stated in 1908 that “We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” Karl Lashley performed experiments on rats in the 1930s that seemed to confirm this idea at the most basic level.
More recently, the statement has been ingrained in popular culture thanks to its repeated use by advertisers. It’s also become a favorite of quacks and charlatans. Take a look around the web or at the “new age” section of the bookstore and see how may “psychics” or paranormal “experts” repeat this 10% claim. Why look, here’s a quote from (in)famous spoon bender Uri Geller: “In fact, most of us use only about 10 percent of our brains, if that.”
Regardless of the source of the statement, it’s all bunk. The idea that humans only use 10% of their brain is completely wrong; we use much more of our brain than that. There are several ways to prove this. There is a clinical answer as well as an evolutionary/developmental approach. To me, the simplest answer relies on modern technology such as PET scans and functional MRI (fMRI) to look at the brain. These studies measure blood flow, which shows which parts of the brain are in use. Thus we can see for ourselves how much of the brain is used. The answer is that even during quiet moments, much more than 10% is active. In fact, over the course of a day, nearly the entire brain is in use at one time or another. The last time I checked, that was a lot more than 10%.
Here’s a much more in-depth article on the 10% Myth from the Skeptical Inquirer
A nice YouTube video where James Randi exposes Uri Geller.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Isn’t the Teen Titans’ villain Deathstroke entirely based on the idea that humans can only use less than 10% of their brain, and that he’s such a great assassin because he was scientifically enhanced to where he can use nearly all of his?
May 11th, 2007 at 1:35 am
Thanks! I run into that &*%#! myth so often talking religion its unbelievably irritating.
May 11th, 2007 at 6:24 am
Yeah, this thing gets to me, too.
I like to respond to the 10% claim by saying, “So I guess you won’t mind if I shoot you in the 90% of your brain that you’re not using.”
(Not sure where I first encountered that line, but it’s a good one.)
May 11th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I present a gag on the subject. Sorta:
http://www.breakpointcity.com/archives/2003/03/08/superpowers/
May 12th, 2007 at 5:26 am
I’ve always taken DeathStroke’s brain “power” to mean that his enhancement is that he can use more *at the same time*, whereas ordinary people may use the same amount over time, but can only use a smaller amount at any given moment – in computer terms, he’s got something like 128-bit pathways compared to ordinary human 8-bit pathways. Same amount of data can be shipped over it, but much faster. So he reacts to situations fast, switches attention fast, can make decisions fast. It’s not superspeed, or superintelligence, but more like superawareness.
May 14th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Humans use more or less all of our brain. But how much of our brain do we CONCIOUSLY use? There are numerous automatic processes we have no control over, such as vision. So I think “90% of brain” should be intepreted as “control over 90% of brain”, in a way humans don’t have.
February 4th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
To say we only use 10% of our brain is kind of true
At a time, maybe
By that logic the most highly developed body is a full seizure victim, flailing about and thrashing
March 29th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
This is what I like to tell friends.
“Do you know what a ham sandwich smells like?”
“Yes.”
“Are you smelling a ham sandwich right now?”
“No.”
“That is part of the ‘missing’ 90%”
The brain has so much reduncancy built in that you wouldn’t want to use ‘100%’ of your brain power. You would go insane from the sensory input alone.
November 8th, 2009 at 5:31 am
From what I understand, 100% of the brain being used at a time is called an epileptic seizure, is it not?
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