Humans Use More Than 10% of Their Brains: Science Myths

[scott1]

http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/?url=myths_gumballs_03.jpg&cat=myths

Humans use only 10 percent of their brains
This media darling has been around for at least a century. Fortunately, it's just not true. MRI imaging clearly demonstrates—with fancy colors no less—that humans put most of their cerebral cortex to good use, even while dozing.
IMAGE CREDIT: Courtesy of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and Dr. Kamil Ugurbil, University of Minnesota.

I thought that was true.

 

[Pengwuino]

I thought that was true.

Maybe you've been around S&D too much?

 

[scott1]

Maybe you've been around S&D too much?

No I just herd herd about that so much that I thought it would be true and I seen people who that I think there brain is vestigial organ.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

From what I have heard it is true but misinterpreted. I was told that we use only approximately 10% of our brains at any given time as opposed to the common misconception that we use only 10% of our total grey matter with the rest never being used.

 

[moose]

From what I have heard it is true but misinterpreted. I was told that we use only approximately 10% of our brains at any given time as opposed to the common misconception that we use only 10% of our total grey matter with the rest never being used.

This is what I believe(d?)

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm

This is more indepth. Apparently even the corrected version that I heard was wrong.

 

[inha]

http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/?url=myths_gumballs_03.jpg&cat=myths
I thought that was true.

That's not even a science myth. IIRC it was started by the scientologists.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

That's not even a science myth. IIRC it was started by the scientologists.

The origins of the myth are not at all clear. Beyerstein, of the Brain Behaviour Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has traced it back to at least the early part of the century. A 1998 column in New Scientist magazine also suggested various roots, including Albert Einstein and Dale Carnegie ("Brain Drain"). It likely has a number of sources, principally misunderstood or misinterpreted legitimate scientific findings as well as self-help gurus.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm