Pop culture likes to tell us we may be using as little as 10% of our brain, but current evidence tells that’s a myth. While early medical observations suggested big areas of the brain are dispensable, modern imaging techniques show that all of our brain is in use. This consensus is based on 14 experts answers from this question: Do we really only use 10% of our brain at any one time?
Some among us have a prodigious memory. Take Stephen Wiltshire, for example. Wiltshire (London, 1974) is an artist and savant who is able to draw an entire city panorama from memory – including squares, monuments, avenues and traffic jams – after seeing it just once.
But why is it that some people have such exceptional memory, while others struggle with ten-item grocery lists? Wiltshire’s brain is roughly the same size as anybody else’s, so a rather tempting explanation is that his superior performance may result from using a bigger portion of it than most of us do..
The idea that we don’t use all of our brain but just a fraction is one that has spread widely and for decades in popular culture, including literature and films (remember Lucy?). We would all then be just a magic pill away from unleashing our colossal brain power. Is that premise true, though? Not at all. We have asked 14 experts in neuroscience and psychiatry, and the strong consensus shared was that in fact we already use our entire brain.
Timing is key
According to Eric M Blalock, an expert from the University of Kentucky, all neurons must be active in your brain, but in a coordinated manner rather than firing all at once. Much like the muscle fibres in your heart, he argues, where at any given time some parts contract as others relax. “If all the muscles in the heart constricted at once, you would not have discovered a way to increase cardiac output to make a super athlete, instead you would have a heart attack”, Blalock says.
Similarly, he explains, if there was a pill to trigger all of your neurons to fire at once, it would in fact lead to an epileptic attack. Instead, all the neurons must be active, but acting like a team. While some fire to communicate with neighbouring cells, others must recover and get ready to fire again when the time comes for it – but all of them are active, and there is no time for any of them to completely switch off. “A neuron ‘at rest’ is like an archer with an arrow knocked and the bow drawn”, in Blalock’s words. “When the neuron fires, it is like losing the arrow. And then the neuron must recover and get ready to do it all over again.”
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🧐Do current neuroscientific studies support the idea that we use only a small fraction of our brains? 🕗Why is timing important in how neurons function within the brain? ✨Can triggering all neurons to fire at once lead to an epileptic attack?Brief history of a misunderstanding
Okay, so the ‘10% hypothesis’ is a myth. But how come the scientific consensus appears now so clear, and where did that false idea come from in the first place? We’d need to look back at old observations made on patients with neurodegeneration or epilepsy.
In neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, there is a progressive death of neurons which eventually results in impairment of brain function. However, symptoms are only detected when a huge percentage (well over half) of the neurons in the affected region have degenerated. This was originally misinterpreted as evidence that all of those neurons were not in use, as explained by neuroscience expert Simon Young, from McGill University.
For Jonathan D Morrow, a psychiatry expert from the University of Michigan, the myth may also derive from medical discoveries made in 1930s Montreal by neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Penfield pioneered a method to locate and remove the source of seizures in patients with epilepsy. This not only laid the foundation of modern epilepsy surgery, but also helped him map the function of the different brain regions. Interestingly, he noted that many parts of the brain could be lesioned without obvious adverse effects.
Such observations led many to think that only a fraction of the brain is really indispensable, but we now know that this is not true. On the contrary, Morrow explains, the ability of some brain areas to compensate for the removal of others arises from the remarkable redundancy and plasticity of our brain circuits – which are built precisely to be able to overcome loss of function caused by minor injuries like these.
How do we know this? Modern, non-invasive imaging techniques, such as functional MRI, allow researchers and clinicians to measure the activity of individual brain regions over time while the subject whose brain is being scanned is conscious (or even performing a task). These techniques are of extraordinary clinical value for diagnosis, and have also been used to demonstrate that essentially all of the brain is in constant use, as our experts argue.
Takeaway
Don’t worry if your memory isn’t always great, all of your brain is already in use. Like savant Stephen Wiltshire once said, just “do the best you can, and never stop.”
Learn more with Consensus AI Academic Search Engine:
🤯What is the origin of the myth that we only use 10% of our brain? 🧠Can functional MRI measure the activity of individual brain regions over time? 🤕What role does brain plasticity play in compensating for brain injuries? 📹Do modern imaging techniques show that all parts of the brain are in use? 👩💻How do modern imaging techniques like functional MRI help in understanding brain activity?