• Question: Do we only use 10% of our brains?

    Asked by anon-188124 to Pizza Ka Yee, Paul, Nadine, Alex on 14 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Alex Reid

      Alex Reid answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Hi, thanks for the great question. No we don’t only use 10% of our brains, this is an example of an urban myth, and good for you for checking yourself if it is true or not. Brain tissue is very expensive to evolve, it uses a lot of our metabolism, and it wouldn’t exist if we didn’t need it in some way. As such: we use all of it, although some areas may be more active than others depending on what you are doing. I really applaud you for asking us this question. If you want to read more about common misconceptions that are not strictly true (not just for psychology) check out this really interesting Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

    • Photo: Nadine Mirza

      Nadine Mirza answered on 14 Nov 2018: last edited 14 Nov 2018 9:13 pm

      Exactly what Alex said- total psychology myth!
      This idea seems to have come from 1908 by the famous American psychologist, William James. He said they we are making use of only a small part of our mental and physical resources- I think he wanted to believe people had more potential. But he never said it had to be about an exact part of our brain.
      The 10% figure came later in a book from 1936. Some people say Einstein came up with this idea but there isn’t much evidence for it.
      Another explanation for why this myth came about is because 10% of our brains are neurons whereas the rest are glial cells that support the neurons. Maybe people assumed that the neurons were doing all the hard work and since they only make 10%……..

    • Photo: Paul Matusz

      Paul Matusz answered on 15 Nov 2018:

      This is certainly a myth – https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-people-only-use-10-percent-of-their-brains/

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