Where Did the 10% Myth Begin?
The 10% statement may have been started with a misquote of Albert Einstein or the misinterpretation of the work of Pierre Flourens in the 1800s. It may have been William James who wrote in 1908: "We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources" (from The Energies of Men, p. 12). Perhaps it was the work of Karl Lashley in the 1920's and 1930's that started it. Lashley removed large areas of the cerebral cortex in rats and found that these animals could still relearn specific tasks. We now know that destruction of even small areas of the human brain can have devastating effects on behavior. That is one reason why neurosurgeons must carefully map the brain before removing brain tissue during operations for epilepsy or brain tumors: they want to make sure that essential areas of the brain are not damaged.

What Does it Mean to Use Only 10% of Your Brain?
What data were used to come up with the number - 10%? Does this mean that you would be just fine if 90% of your brain was removed? If the average human brain weighs 1,400 grams (about 3 lb) and 90% of it was removed, that would leave 140 grams (about 0.3 lb) of brain tissue. That's about the size of a sheep's brain. It is well known that damage to a relatively small area of the brain, such as that caused by a stroke, may cause devastating disabilities. Certain neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's Disease, also affect only specific areas of the brain. The damage caused by these conditions is far less than damage to 90% of the brain.

The Evidence (or lack of it)
Perhaps when people use the 10% brain statement, they mean that only one out of every ten nerve cells is essential or used at any one time? How would such a measurement be made? Even if neurons are not firing action potentials, they may still be receiving signals from other neurons.
Furthermore, from an evolutionary point of view, it is unlikely that larger brains would have developed if there was not an advantage. Certainly there are several pathways that serve similar functions. For example, there are several central pathways that are used for vision. This concept is called "redundancy" and is found throughout the nervous system. Multiple pathways for the same function may be a type of "safety mechanism" should one of the pathways fail. Still, functional brain imaging studies show that all parts of the brain function. Even during sleep, the brain is active. The brain is still being "used," it is just in a different active state.
Finally, the saying "Use it or Lose It" seems to apply to the nervous system. During development many new synapses are formed. In fact, some synapses are eliminated later on in development. This period of synaptic development and elimination goes on to "fine tune" the wiring of the nervous system. Many studies have shown that if the input to a particular neural system is eliminated, then neurons in this system will not function properly. This has been shown quite dramatically in the visual system: complete loss of vision will occur if visual information is prevented from stimulating the eyes (and brain) early in development. It seems reasonable to suggest that if 90% of the brain was not used, then many neural pathways would degenerate. However, this does not seem to be the case. On the other hand, the brains of young children are quite adaptable. The function of a damaged brain area in a young brain can be taken over by remaining brain tissue. There are incredible examples of such recovery in young children who have had large portions of their brains removed to control seizures. Such miraculous recovery after extensive brain surgery is very unusual in adults.
Source

So what does everyone think? B.S or not?

The 10% brain theory doesn't come from the amount of brain tissue that you need to survive. It comes from the amount of brain tissue that you actively use (things that are not automated by your body). For example, your heart beating does not count towards the 10%, but you better believe you need that part of your brain. However, thinking about why you enjoy a piece of music so much is using that 10%. I don't personally believe that 10% is exactly the amount of brain tissue used, but it is probably somewhere around there - imagine the amount of things in your body that you do not actively have to control.

well, if the bibles true then people who lived like 600 years+ they probably used 70% of their brain. idk?

BSSOURCE

Everyone uses 100% of their brain. It's just that most don't use it very well....

Lol So true!

Well this is newly found information to me, I feel so sheltered.
I always wondered why our brain would be the size it is if we didn't use it all.

There are some parts of our brain that we do not use. These parts are things that human kind has not been able to harness...but quite possibly used to. Like telepathy, telekenisis. I also think that certain types of vision could be completly possible ..like infrered. Unfortunatly I feel to be able to see with infrared would cause so much energy drain that it would shorten our lifes.
However, this is my opinion. I don't care what yours is. I'm just replying to the thread.

Actually there is probably only 10% of our brain that we do not use. Its just that at one given time, we are only using 10%. But that does not mean we do not use the other 90, it means we dont use the other 90% all at one time. The activities that we preform only require that we use 10% of our brain. Maybe once we find more challenging activities for our brain, we will use more then the 10% at once.

Use it or loose it.

maybe that 10% that is'nt used, if you go for the reverse theory, is the part of the brain that produces energy in the form of PK, TK, poltergeist type phenomena etc.

Just a thought.

Just out of interest do you always base your opinions on wild conjecture or do you have some reason for believing all this.

This is my opinion. If you don't like it smeg off. I don't have to explain myself to you.

We might use 100% of our brains, but science still doesn't understand all of it.

SNOPES OWNS YOU

Lightning strikes a church during a sermon after preacher identifies thunder as the voice of God.
http://www.snopes.com/religion/bolt.htm

Edit: And um... brain is good... use it!

Yes I agree, the energy drain would be too great... likely it would cause a rift in the space-time continuum. Promise me D.O.N.... you'll never try infrared sight on your own, make sure there's someone there to perform psi-recovery on you. There are many gifted young psionicists on this forum, all with unimaginable powers... take your pick.

10% huh?

Well, my brain is better than your because i havn't used mine yet

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Everyone uses 100% of their brain.  It's just that most don't use it very well..
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Nothing could be further from the truth. Most people rely primarily on the left or right hemisphere of the brain. Those with advanced numerical, practical and technical skills use the left side, and those with advanced creative skills rely more on the right side of the brain. I am simplifying this of course, but in either case people often neglect to develop/use/harness at least 50% of their brain potential, mainly out of laziness and social conditioning.
Relying on a particular hemisphere doesn't automatically mean your using 50% of your brain potential though. A Mathematician or a scientist, who puts 12 hour days of focused left hemisphere effort, for instance, would be approaching the 50% mark (after years of sustained effort), while a checkout girl at the supermarket(who also relies on numerical skills to some extent) probably doesn't even approach the 5% mark. The potential might be there, but it lies dormant.

Wrong!


SOURCE
I posted this link earlier in the thread.

Can I throw a different angle into the game?

How about we only use 10% of our consciousness? We use most of our brains abilities to live within that 10%, if we start to expand our imagination and inner vision we develop the synapsis to cope with this expansion.

That is to say, our brain expands the more we stretch it.

where do you get your statistics from

OK READ THIS...

Brain Myth http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html



http://www.theness.com/articles/brain-nejs0201.html



http://www.brainconnection.com/topics/?main=fa/brain-myth

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In other words, the statement, "We use only 10% of our brains" is false; it's a myth. We use all of our brain.
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Did you bother to read the specific quote I was replying to?
Should I spell it out for you?

" We all use 100% of our brains..."

A statement I find dismaly inaccurate and ignorant.

Did you bother to read the first post ?

Why do you find that so ignorant ? You're talking at cross purposes. You are talking about application rather than physical usage. Refering to your check out girl example, clearly, if you removed 95% of her brain she would not be turning up for work the next day.

Watch the movie "Powder", Einstein said if we could use all of our brain there would be no need for our bodies.

What references are you using? Maybe we can say the same!
csicop.org
The Brain Connection

But if it a consolation I did find this
NewsReleaseWire.com

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If you removed 95% of her brain she would not be turning up for work
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She would be impaired (or dead) of course, because the brain regulates all sorts of internal vital functions. It does this continuously and without any conscious effort, just like the heart. But this 'auto-pilot' mode does not mean the brain is being harnessed to its full potential. The human brain is inmensly powerful and it can do far more than just regulate internal vital functions. Removing a portion of the brain would be absurdly suicidal of course, so I don't think it's a valid point in this argument.
The myth "We only use 10% of our brain" could be rephrased as "We only harness 10% of our brain power throughout one lifetime"

It could be rephrased as that, but then we'd be talking about something different.

There are two arguments here, application and physical usage. You are mixing them both together. We can only use the figure 10% if we talk about the physical amount of the brain that's used. Otherwise what do we mean by it ? If you're talking about potential then you're suggesting you know what the limits are in order to state we are only 10% there.

In your examples you state 50% usage because half of the brain is used which is based on the physical usage not the potential which is currently pure conjecture and impossible to put percentages on.

All percentage figures are approximate, because at this point we don't know enough about the human brain. But given that the physical dimensions of most adult brains are very similar, it's clear some individuals barely use it, while others seem to push it to the limit. And given that the brain "is a muscle" (so to speak), because it gets more efficient and capable the more you exercise it, it shouldn't surprise us that most people barely use it. Exercise, physical or mental is not easy, in fact, it's very challenging. Even more so if you're talking long term benefits, where day to day consistency is required over a period of years.
Getting back to the myth: "We only use 10% of our brains", I believe this applies to the majority of people, because lazyness is more common than obesity.

is there a source saying that we use 100 percent of our brain, because iheard we use like 40 or 50 percent of it?

i heard Albert Einstien used 100 percent of his brain though is this true?

That is absolutely true. There's a switch on the back of your head that switches between 40% and 50% mode.



Albert Einstein used 100% of his brain which was why he was so smart. He also had magic powers as we all know that those unused brain bits are for that.

Sally Jessy Raphael uses 1% of her brain and Dr. Phil uses 101% of his.

ah come on, be fair to him! Einstein was proven (Im pretty sure) to have an enlarged section of part of his brain, an area that dealt with maths. I think this was on the BBC a while ago.

WTF? Where are all these percentages coming from? Einstien didnt have a larger portion of his brain!!!!

Everyone uses 100% of their brain, every part of their brain produces chemicals which make you think. What makes one person smarter than another is the ease and amount at which they can produce these chemicals. Einstien used 13% of the potential chemical output of his brain on average. Most people hover between 6 - 8%. If you want to increase your brain-power do some visualization exercises and meditate, just like any muscle if the brain is worked out it becomes stronger, faster, and able to deal with problems alot easier.

i always thought this was referring to your commonly used neuronal net.
Not that someone couldn't fire every nuron they ever had or made, but not all at once Maybe ten percent is the amount that can be fired at once or the amount regularly fired.
As we know that nurons that fire together wire together and those that don't die off. But that doesn't mean you can not regenerate their useability.

Nurons are brain cells that fire, sending messages, doing things like releasing chemicals or smacking a fly.

if my friend is only using 10% of his brain then he is a genius if he used his hole brain lol:P

The BBC never lies Zaus. There are several sites that say similar things to this, not saying it is 100& reliable though...

'Sandra F. Witelson and colleagues discovered that Einstein's brain lacked a particular small wrinkle (the parietal operculum) that most people have. Perhaps in compensation, other regions on each side were a bit enlarged—the inferior parietal lobes. These regions are known to have something to do with visual imagery and mathematical thinking.'

http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/einbrain.htm


'The secret of Einstein's immense intellect may finally have been uncovered - one area of his brain was significantly different than most people's. '
'They think their findings may well explain his genius for mathematical and spatial thinking.'
'In general, Einstein's brain was the same as all the others except in one particular area - the region responsible for mathematical thought and the ability to think in terms of space and movement. '
'Extensive development of this region meant that Einstein's brain was 15% wider than the other brains studied.
Uniquely, Einstein's brain also lacked a groove that normally runs through part of this area. The researchers suggest that its absence may have allowed the neurons to communicate much more easily. '

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/371698.stm

None of this is 100% proven, but it is quite probable, so do some further research Zaus and don't dismiss other theories so quickly.

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Oh really?
Then perhaps you can explain:

-why certain creative types cannot process/understand numerical concepts
-why certain mathematical types cannot express themselves creatively
-why cutting edge brain scans show expert-level minds (like mathematicians, classical musicians or memory whizards) use greater and more diverse portions of their brain than the average person when given THE SAME task to process.

What are you using for reference or is this just an opinion?

I agree with you for the most part here. I have seen on many occasions people learning things out of a book but when it comes time to put that knowledge to actual use they were lost....with out a clue what to do. Some one might be a master in specific field and any thing else out of that they are like a lost child.

Why yes i can! As you can see from my first post(which you didnt read, cause if you did you wouldn't have asked), I said we use 100% of our brain, that is every part of our brain. The real question is how much chemicals are being produced, and how easily they are produced when a thought process is started.

1) the creative parts of their brain produce chemicals much easier than the mathematical parts

2) vica-versa

3) this is due to the fact that even if your not using the correct part of the brain to fulfill a task ANY chemical produced works(abstract or straightforward) to solve the problem. In fact you could solve a mathematical problem even if no chemicals were produced in the mathematical parts of your brain, as long as you had enough brain power in different sections the answer would be blatantly obvious even if you couldn't figure out why.

Now stop bothering me and start using your brain for something useful.

We use 20% if even that much.

Since there must be room for things most of us don't use, lite telepathy, telekinesis etc....I say 80%

80% are you joking? We do have an unconcious mind ... so it cant be more than 50% ... Read Einstiens work

I am annoyed that no-one has reffered to my Einstein links. oh well. I know I have no evidence to back this up, because I cba finding any atm, but I vaguely remember programs on several channels saying that we use 25% of our brains, and that we don't know what some areas do. Dont kill me for stating a memory, I have already researched Einstein and now I am tired.

All this talk about Einstein.

Listen to what he had to say about himself:

"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer ."

vica-versa?

Zaus, I think YOUR brain is not releasing the right spelling chemicals for one!
But seriously, you're missing the point. It's not only about chemicals, otherwise science would have already found a way to make people more intelligent, boost memory dramatically, etc.
The brain scan examples clearly show that most people deal with mental tasks/challenges at a superficial level. If these same people would involve their minds more fully in the problem (visualizing, or memorizing more effectively for instance) they too would get better results and this would show in the brain scans.
Also, the reason why a mathematically/technically oriented person often isn't artistically inclined, is to do with left/right hemisphere functions. Most people favour one (hemisphere) heavily at the expense of the other. Given the right circumnstances, it might be possible for the left hemisphere person (typically objective, analytical, sequential, rational, good with numbers, etc.) to tap into his hidden right hemisphere powers and become artistically expressive. Many books have been written on the subject, by psychologists, neuroscientists and educators. One that comes to mind is "Drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards.

could you elaborate on what words were incorrectly spelled?



Science HAS found ways to make people incredibly intelligent and boost memory. The only problem is the field of psychoactive drugs has been outlawed. If scientists were able to legally study the effects of psychoactive drugs on people, the chemicals that deal with making visualization easier could be isolated and mixed together with other chemicals to balance out the "high". Too bad the government is made of assholes. Then there's ginko-biloba and several other herbal suppliments that do increase memory span.



um... it does show up in brain scans? What the hell are you trying to prove?



you mean left/right hemisphere communication... between neurons and chemicals?

P.S. if you press ctrl+alt+delete a whole bunch you will get smarter!

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could you elaborate on what words were incorrectly spelled?
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I'll "spell it out" for you in case you have developed some form of amnesia: VICA-VERSA (correctly spelled vice versa)
As for psychoactive drugs or even nootropics, how can you say they work when they haven't been extensively tested on people? National Geographic, Time magazine and other CREDIBLE publications have touched on the topic of brain-boosters, and come to the conclusion that so far the "magic pill" hasn't been found. Ginko Biloba was recently found to be far less effective than previously thought in boosting memory (I heard this on a TV news segment), and in any case, we were discussing whether SCIENCE (particularly biochemistry and neuroscience) has found an "anabolic steroid-like" drug for the brain. And despite the wild claims of some of these herbal brain boosters, science remains skeptical.
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you mean left/right hemisphere communication... between neurons and chemicals?
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No, I meant what I said: left/right hemisphere FUNCTIONS.
Drawing is largely a right-brain FUNCTION.