Do we use 10% of our brain?
By: Natali Jakarian
Tags: Neuroscience, Myth Busting, Brain, Neurology, Myths

We have all heard it before; we use 10% of our brain and those who are lucky and considered geniuses such as Einstein use more thus their intelligence.

Our brain with its different parts¹

However, in reality, we use virtually every part of the brain, and most of it is active almost all the time. We have to keep in mind that although our brain is about 3% of our body’s weight, it does use 20% of our body’s energy. Thus from an evolutionary perspective, wherein every organ in our bodies has been naturally selected for energy efficiency, having a brain taking 20% of our energy for a mere 10% efficiency doesn’t make sense.

Then, where did the myth come from and why it stayed for so long?

It is hard to say when and where exactly the myth came from but it may have emerged from the writing of a psychologist and philosopher named William James as well as Boris Sidis a psychologist, physician, psychiatrist, and philosopher of education.

In the 1890s they have conducted research where they raised Sidis’ prodigy son William in an accelerated developmental environment. William, the kid, had estimated to have an IQ of 250–300. Einstein had an IQ of 160 to put it in perspective.

The researchers thought that in order for such intelligence to existing, humans must have some reserve mental and physical energy that’s hidden and not used.

Thus James told a lecture audience, as well as mentioned in his book; The Energies of Men, that people only use a fraction of their full mental and physical recourses. This seems like a plausible claim.

This idea has been popularized further by others such as in the introduction to How to Win Friends and Influence People.

The reason for the myth’s durability has to do with our insecurities as humans. We see our shortcomings as evidence of an unused gray matter that we’re born with and can’t help change. Some are simply born lucky. It’s easier to accept our shortcomings as birth effects rather than putting in hard work and overcoming them.

How many percentages of the brain do we actually use?

We do use 100% of it, just not all the time.

If all the neurons in the brain are firing simultaneously, the hyperactivity will cause several issues such as epileptic seizures.

However, similar to our body’s muscles, using imaging technology have shown that most of our brain is continually active over a 24-hour period. The function of our brain has to do with the quality of activity than quantity.

Some groups of neurons are active during a certain task, while others become inactive.

Let’s take listening to music as an example; as we listen to music and analyze its components, our auditory cortex is activated, which in turn it works with the cerebellum to break down music to more elementary components.

Our cerebellum is connected with another part of the brain called the amygdala; it’s responsible for our emotions, survival instincts, and memory. It’s due to this region we get emotional to a song and cry when listening to skinny Love by Bon Iver.

If we’re watching the music video, then our visual cortex is activated as well.

We don’t think too much about it, but our brain does activate many of its parts without making us feel as if we’re doing hard work.