Are you really using only 10% of your brain?

I love folklore, I am a Pagan so it comes with the territory. What I do not like is when people confuse myths with reality and facts with fiction. Unfortunately, the result is often the undermining of their or other peoples abilities. Sure, I too have seen people that seem like they are not using their brain at all but that does not change the fact that they actually are, I just don't like the way they are. You are using more than 10% of the brain and as much as I have enjoyed the Lucy movie, it is just that, a movie.

Today I will help you to separate facts from fiction once again and remind you that you are more special than you think so do not let anyone undermine your natural abilities. Your brain is an amazing organ and by saying that you are using only 10% of it is kind of insulting it and yourself. You are more powerful than you realize and it was never about not using your brain but instead the way you were using it.

We do not know for certain exactly when and where the myth about 10% started but we can trace it back to 1970s when psychologist and educator Georgi Lozanov proposed the teaching method of suggestopedia and suggested: "that we might be using only five to ten percent of our mental capacity". The method is mostly used for learning languages. Ever since then, the 10% thing found its way into popular culture and became a part of many movies and books.

Brain scans have shown that no matter what you are doing, most of the brain areas are always active. Some brain areas are sometimes more active than others but positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow us to see the activity of the living brain and reveal that even during sleep, all parts of it show some level of activity. Only when there is brain damage are some areas not working. The mapping functions onto areas of the brain show how there are distinct regions for different kinds of information processing but no function-less areas have been found.

The human brain weighs 1.4 kilograms and has about one billion neurons with each of them forming about 1,000 connections to other neurons. This amounts to more than a trillion connections. Keep in mind that one neuron does not mean one memory, oooo no no. Every neuron helps with many memories at a time, and that exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to around 2.5 petabytes. There is still a lot to learn about the brain and I always say how some of the money (all of it) from the military should be invested in science that actually helps and not destroys humanity. You can check an interesting research that debunked the 10% myth here:

When we read, write, talk to someone or think about anything, we are also creating new memories. Everything that you can remember, from knowledge about differential equations to how your first date looked like, is a memory or a piece of data that your brain has. The "binary message" from a neuron (to fire or not to fire) can produce 26 different sizes of neurons. The amazing thing when comparing a brain to a computer is that a computer requires 50 million times more energy to do the same task as a human brain. The research suggests that the human brain may be able to hold as much information in its memory as is contained on the entire Internet. You can read about it here:

We have already covered how the brain has the capacity to store an immense amount of information at the synapses between nerve cells. This next research that I want to bring to your attention tells us how those memories are stored. Neurons in the brain are connected by synapses and when chemical signals move across them, information is being transmitted through the brain. When we have a new idea or come in contact with some new information, millions of brain cells communicate with one another and release neurotransmitters across synapses.

The hippocampus, critical to memory, was studied using electron microscopy. The researchers were expecting to see the synapses enlarging but some were also getting smaller. One of the scientists noted how these findings make sense because if the synapses only grew larger we would eventually run out of storage space or reach our limit. By varying the size of synapses, more of them can actually be stored and the capacity of the brain increases.

We use all of our brains. It is how we use them that is different from one human to another. We are all born (not including genetic defects and injuries) with the same potential so why do some create wonders and others do not? Because some realize how big that potential is and some do not.

There are two methods of storing information that are used the most. One is by repetition and is most frequently used and the other one is with strong emotional influence. When you see something that produces a strong emotional response in you (good or bad) you will either remember it or forget it as a way of the coping mechanism but we all learn by repeating. Every repetition strengthens the synapses in charge of it, from learning how to walk to remembering up to fifty digits of PI, we learn by repeating. We are different when it comes to additional aids needed with that repetition. Some need sound and some need colors but repetition is the key factor here and keep in mind that the more things you associate with the information (sound, image, emotion etc) the more easier you will remember it. The first thing every human should learn is that new information is fun, good, beneficial, important and valuable. If we learn our children to love learning and if we teach them how to learn, we have done the biggest job. The rest is up to them.