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The 10% Myth: More Brain, Less Fiction
39 Plays1 month ago
In this episode of Neuroblast!, Athena and Tracey debunk the myth that we only use 10% of our brains. They explore the myth’s origins, discuss modern brain research showing full brain activity, and highlight the brain’s neuroplasticity.
Original music by: Julian Starr
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Invitation
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Tracey. I Athena it's so great to you. Hey, do you want to make a podcast with me? I think that sounds like it's a necessary and a wonderful idea. Thanks. Let's do it.
Guest Introductions and Roles
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi, I'm Athena Stevens, actor, writer, and someone with a brain, and this is Neuroblast . The odcast where we bust brain myths one neuron at a time .
00:00:46
Speaker
Tracey, who the heck are you and what do you do? My name is Tracey Tokuhama Espinosa and I teach at the Harvard University Extension School, specifically in a course called the neuroscience of learning, an introduction to mind, brain, health and education, where we look at transdisciplinary perspectives of how to approach problems and how to understand our brains better and how to use them a lot better.
Podcast Idea: Debunking Brain Myths
00:01:12
Speaker
And so Tracey I saw of a problem, and that is we needed a podcast on this. So that's why we're here, and that's why we made Neuroblast.
00:01:25
Speaker
So, Tracey, today I was wondering if you could tell us about the 10% percent myth, the idea that we only use 10% of our brains, which I don't know about you, but some of the guys I've dated seem like they're using even less.
Origin of the 10% Brain Usage Myth
00:01:47
Speaker
Well, the 10% myth is a perfect one place to start because it's actually the oldest myth. It's been around forever. And there's a lot of good reasons it exists and a lot of good reasons we should now get rid of it. And so I really appreciate you wanting to start us with this idea that we can only use out of all of our brain capacity, just 10%, it's kind of bizarre that we ever thought that. um But if you look back in history, there's a lot of good reasons why people did believe that in the past. We no longer believe that now.
00:02:19
Speaker
So where did this bizarre idea come from? Because it seems almost anti-evolution. You've got the whole thing. It must be there for some reason. Why did we decide only 10% was worth anything and the rest was just, you know, oatmeal?
Debunking the Myth with Modern Technology
00:02:42
Speaker
Well it's really, I guess it's two parts. That's how it started and then how it gets promoted ah that have caused most of the problems. It began back in the 80s when we started to invest money into neuroimaging. We started putting lots of money and getting better and better neuroimaging, which is great, but it was still pretty, pretty terrible compared to what we have right now, right? And so at the time you would have somebody lie in a scanner and you'd say okay Athena I name all the animals you can think of that start with the letter D and you'd lie down and you'd say something like you know, dog or donkey or dino well dinosaurs aren't aren't animals, but you would start to label things and they would see that about 10% of your brain was lighting up at that moment and that's because of the poor
00:03:29
Speaker
Quality of the neuro imaging that was only picking up the biggest or most important or strongest electrical signals that that could be perceived at that time so back in the day you would actually say you know well people are just using 10% of their brain and now However, you have a lot better neural technology, neural imaging techniques, and you can actually see how all of these networks get primed and how you get ready to think of this idea and you go back through semantic memory tracks and then you go back through, you know, your autobiographical memory in your context with other animals and all these other things that are happening.
00:04:05
Speaker
and there's a whole lot of your brain involved in just producing that one word dog or donkey it's it's coming it there's a lot of prep work going on there but we weren't able to pick that up in neuroimaging beforehand now we can and-- and basically what you're saying is we thought the neuroimaging technology we had back then was the end-all and be-all of neurotechnology? Well, I guess that's how science is, right? You just sort of use the best things you have available at this moment. And, you know, you base your truths on that, which is kind of crazy. So we know that there are really no truths in science, right? There's just evidence or lack of evidence. So when the evidence began to pour in but that that 10% idea was just wrong,
00:04:53
Speaker
Well, a lot of the scientists quickly had buy-in. But the problem is, the second part of this problem is that the popular press always picks up on this. And, you know, popular press books or things or self-help books or things that talk to, you know, this is the way to, you know, the very short answers. This is the checklist. Do A and B happens in your brain.
00:05:14
Speaker
um which we now know none of that is true. The brain is super, super complex compared to how we present it in the real world. . But um this 10% myth has been promoted in newspapers um in even in some textbooks, unfortunately, and it continues to be, which is a real problem. So the myth began, it was debunked, but it continues to live because it has this life in the popular press, which is unfortunate because all myths, Athena, this is a the idea here is that all myths do harm. And I think our first job in education is to do no harm, just like doctors, right? The key idea is to use the best evidence possible because the minute you tell somebody, well, you know, you only have 10% of your brain and, you know, oops, you're full or whatever, you can't learn anymore. and that's terrible, right? And so myths do harm because they put limitations on people's potential.
Default Mode Mechanism: Brain Activity at Rest
00:06:09
Speaker
So how much of our brain do we use?
00:06:13
Speaker
That's a great question. Nobody really knows the answer. A big hint came in in the early 2000s when um there was this fantastic ah discovery or identification of what's called the default mode mechanism. So it's kind of this baseline you get when you put people in neuroimaging machines. And before they do an activity or a task, you say, just do nothing. Just lie there. They get a baseline. And then you have them do something like you know multiply these numbers that you're seeing on the screen or whatever.
00:06:42
Speaker
And then they do a subtraction situation. So they say, OK, what you were doing you know when you're doing nothing and when you're doing the task, this makes the difference. So this little piece here is what must be going on in your brain when you're doing the task, right? So it was kind of a subtraction problem. But what's so fascinating is that in the early 2000s, we started to figure out that your brain ah in this default mode was pretty much you know, 80, 90% active. Everything was still going on. It wasn't like, you know, so you didn't have to be task specific to be using your brain. So this really opened up a lot of ideas today to, you know, really crushing this myth that your brain is well, if when you're doing nothing, you're still using 90% of your brain, well, it's impossible then that you're just you know, that you're ever using only 10%. That was a real
00:07:34
Speaker
way to show that we weren't just using 10% of our brain, but where we don't know exactly how much we are using. We know that many different areas of the brain are involved in very complex neural networks in the brain, and that there's different um hubs and nodes, places through which you know electrical and chemical signals pass multiple times.
00:07:54
Speaker
And when you look at the brain, for example, in the Connectome project to see the more technical aspects of how neuroimaging can be used to look at all these networks, it becomes really clear. There is nothing going on in just this 10% spot. Networks are very complex and very active um
Brain's Energy Consumption and Constant Activity
00:08:12
Speaker
throughout. We don't know if you're using 100% of your brain. We always know we can use more.
00:08:16
Speaker
than we are using because more networks can always be built there um but we don't you know we don't have a firm answer to that so basically it's a bit like my phone even though right now i'm not doing anything with my phone is you know i'm not touching it i'm talking to you um because i know i can't multi-task i'll get into that later um but it's a bit like my phone in that it is receiving the time and it is available the calls and it is receiving messages from YouTube about a video that it thinks I want to see which I probably don't um but it's still connected to a network even though it's not me messing with it at the moment yeah and so it is using energy and that was that's what's so fascinating I mean your whole
00:09:13
Speaker
your brain is never not working okay so like even in sleep we'll talk about that another time but your brain is is active um all the time you're never not using your brain right and so this is why your your your brain is this it's the most energy hungry organ in your body yeah talk to me about that that what Like, what? How much energy do it use? compared to its size so its It's very small relative to to other parts of your body, but it's about 2% of your entire body weight, but it consumes almost about 20% of all of the energy. So your your caloric intake is really dedicated
00:09:59
Speaker
to this one organ in your body that we don't know exactly what percentage of it or which pieces are always working. But if you look at resting state neuroimaging or these default mode network things, you'll see the brain is incredibly active even when it appears to be silent or quiet or at rest. So the next time I want to jump the guy I probably shouldn't justify if .. . he uses less than 10% of his brain? There's some people we really think aren't really using. We know none of us are using our full potential, but we're definitely sure that some people aren't aren't even using their minimal potential. you're you're absolutely right. You're you're right there.
Podcast Goals: Education and Debunking Myths
00:10:45
Speaker
I think in many ways that is the heart of this podcast because Tracey and I share a passion for a lot of learning and expanding our brains and expanding our potential and that to us in many ways is why we want to bring this information to you a lot of both because myths do harm, as we will talk about again and again, but also, myths limit our story. You're absolutely right. And I would just put this into this category of, um it's almost like law of minimal effort or heuristics. Most people just use the information they have at hand. And I think another important reason for this podcast, Athena, that I was so happy when you you brought up this great idea is that
00:11:38
Speaker
it takes a lot of time to be on top of the new evidence and a lot of people just don't have the time to do all this background research to figure out is this true or not true. So hopefully we can cut to the chase with some good information by digesting some of the newer evidence for people as well.
Encouragement and Brain's True Potential
00:11:55
Speaker
Absolutely and indeed the next time that you feel like you're running on 10% remember your brains got your back and it's a working hard for you even when you don't feel it. And we here on the podcast really working hard to bring you more information as well. So definitely stay tuned so that we can debunk the more myths and dive deeper into brain science in a fun, joyous way. Thank you for joining us on Neuroblast.
00:12:34
Speaker
Remember, you are always using way more than 10% of your brain. And that's the good news for everyone. Take care. See next time.