Imagine there is a secret in our body that if you brain can reserved some brain power lying in wait, and it can be summoned with using some special method or turning on some special trigger in your body. That will be extremely convenient. Such imagination lead us to dream that our human only use 10 percent of our brains.

Related Anecdotes

The rumor probably started in 1980 when a science write, Roger Lewis, wrote an article introducing the famous research done by British neurologist about” Is your brain necessary? ” Otherwise, the ten percent statement may have been started from a misquote from Albert Einstein: we are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resource. Although it is really ideal to think that way, according to many researches, there is no scientific evidence showing that we only take advantage of 10 percent of our brain.

Lack of evidence…

First of all, there is no data coordinating with 10%. Let say if one cuts up 90 percent of his brain, will it be fine? The average human brain is known as the 1.4 kilogram. If we take the 90 percent of the whole, that would leave only 0.14 kilogram, which is equal to the size of a puppy brain. The brain size is well-known as the determinant of intelligence. We literally can do nothing with a brain weighted only 0.14 kilogram. Furthermore, some disease like stroke, and Parkinson’s would cause devastating disabilities, but those only influence on certain area of our brain. if we only use only 10 percent of our brain, it is more likely that those injuries happen at the utilized ninety percent. Such injuries are supposed not to matter our basic function, but somehow they do hurt, and do cause disability.

Some people may argue that when people use 10% statement, they mean in every ten nerve cells, we only utilize one of them at any given time. Whereas, there is no measurement showing there are neurons are at resting. By using Action potentials test,the result indicates even if a cell are not firing action potentials, those cells still are still attaining signals from other neurons.

Form the point of evolution, our body tends to eliminate the redundancy. Therefore, what’s left in our body must serve functions. One either uses it or loses it. Taking the development of synapses as example, scientist found that some synapses are eliminated as we develop. This is because our brain goes on to fine-tune the wiring of nervous system. Then it seems right to say that if the 90 percent of brain is unused, then many neural pathways would degenerate.

Finally, functional brain imaging shows that all parts of our brain function, but not in the same time. In a given time period, we only use maybe a small portion of brain. however, if the a movement is complex enough, indeed, there would be much more use of it. We can make an analogy with our muscle. One cannot using all his muscle in a same time, just like one would not use all of his brain in a short time interval. In term of a long term, like a day, one definitely would use all of his brain if he does some intense work.

Conclusion…

Conclusively, the world is complex place. It is fooling us with mixed type of messages. However, one thing we know for sure is that it doesn’t make any sense our brain has some hidden power. Instead of thinking about finding none-existing dormant chunks, in order to improve your brain, what one needs to do is getting more sleep and eating more brain food.

Work cited

http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Science_No-Brain.pdf

http://www.bustle.com/articles/91859-do-you-really-use-only-10-percent-of-your-brain-no-science-says-so-stop-repeating

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_ten-percent_myth/