using 10% of your brain...?

[joko]

I was always under the impression that this 'belief' came about as a social comment about our general levels of intelligence...the fact that we have the capacity to be much more intelligent than most of us currently are simply because we dont 'use' our brains to learn more or rather we dont choose to....that many average people are content to have a basic adult education and knowledge.

....rather than in a literal, clinical, medical and physical way...

but that over time many have come to think of it in the latter way and so tests have been done in labs on the brain which basically dismiss the concept....(even disregarding the constant brain power our automatic uncontrollable functions use)

have i misunderstood the original meaning?

cheers

[Sqad]

LOL...joko, you are a deep thinker....far more of a thinker than sqad and I am afraid that you may well be looking for a philosophical answer rather than a scientific one.

Sorry about my reply.

[CanisMajor]

I think first you must be clearer about whether you mean intelligence or knowledge. Intelligent people are often knowledgeable but it is far from being always the case
Knowledge acquisition requires no intelligence and intelligence does not demand a lot of knowledge. I think the whole 10% thing is mythery.

[joko]

it depends of how you acquire that knowledge...if you memorise it parrot fashion, then its not the same as studying, absorbing and understanding it.

you can often tell when someones 'expertise' appears to be nothing more than recalling passages from books, which often crumbles under questioning.

they would pass a test but be unable to write an essay without some plagiarising

[Calibax]

It costs a lot of energy to create the human brain. The thought that evolution would have brought about a brain that was 90% redundant is scarcely credible.

[joko]

thats kind of the point im making calibax...

[Mick-Talbot]

have i misunderstood the original meaning?




I don't know, but you seem to have only used 10% of the commas, that your post needed. I had to read it a few times to understand what you meant.

[Mick-Talbot]

Anyway, what Calibax said.

[Wak]

The way I see it, you are not born with a 100% brain and then only use 10% of it while the remaining 90% goes to waste.
I imagine that you are born with a standard size, normal brain and then, through learning, schooling and experience, it gradually increases the internal links and neurons (?) etc. to accommodate and record the information/data acquired over the years. i.e. the more you study, the more links and connections are made to the memory and the more you know.
As you get older, these links are inclined to fail through lack of use and bodily nourishment which, later on, can be the start of Alzheimer's/Dementia, etc.
I suppose the brain can be likened to a flexible hard drive, the actual file/info capacity depending upon the user/operator whilst the registry (natural bodily functions) runs automatically.
All of the above could be rubbish but at least it is something else to read on a Sunday evening.

[cazzz1975]

the whole 10% thing is a myth, we used 100% of our brains.

[Mick-Talbot]

do i flump

[Carakeel]

As far as I understand it, we acutally use 100% of the brain within any 24 hours. However, when we sleep we use around 10%. The brain has so many thousands, of functions to perform and our thinking / speaking processes are only a small part of what is has to contend with. When my son had brain cancer, there was a lot of talk about trying to retrain parts of the brain to take over actions that the cancer damaged cells could no longer manage. But this is such a difficult thing to do and there is, as far as I know, very limited success. In the end his astrocytoma took over 3/4 of his brain and we lost the battle three days before his 21st birthday. But so often people say we only use 10% of our brains which is actually wrong. We use all of our brain, just not all at the same time. This is how I understand it. But there are so many amazing findings on the subject and I doubt we will ever really understand fully how our brains work. I've given up on mine, lol!

[joko]

mmm...not sure most are actually reading the question here - and seem to think that the 'myth' is based on the physical and clinical attributes of the brain as an organ, than, as i stated, in the first part of my question...

my point being, that it is not really a myth because it has been misunderstood and taken literally...with people believing something that was never intended in the first place and which is clearly untrue.

[boxtops]

I think it's possible that different people have different intellectual capacities - those who have amazing powers of thought and understanding (e.g. Stephen Hawking) surely have developed those parts of their brains with use. Do they use more of their brain than someone who never went to school, never developed education? - I don't know.