Whenever those of us who study the brain leave the ivory tower to give public lectures or interviews with the media, they are always asked the same question. The disappointing look that usually comes after the answer: "I'm afraid it's not" convincingly shows that the myth of 10% is one of those encouraging truisms that refuses to die simply because it would be too good if it were true.
This myth is widespread even among psychology students and other educated people.
In one study, when students studying psychology were asked, "What percentage of their potential intelligence do you think most people use?"- One third said 10%. 59% of Brazilians who graduated from college also believe that people use only 10% of their brains. Notably, the same survey showed that even 6% of neurologists agree!
Of course, none of us would refuse to let his brain work to its full potential. Not surprisingly, those who thrive exploiting people's futile hope for a breakthrough in self-improvement continue to trade in an endless stream of dubious schemes and devices based on the myth of 10%. Always in search of a "pleasant" story, the media play a big role in maintaining this optimistic myth. Most advertising continues to refer to the myth of 10% as a fact of life, hoping to flatter potential customers who see that they have gone beyond their intellectual abilities. For example, in his popular book "How to Be Twice as Smarter," Scott Whitt wrote: "If you're like most people, you only use ten percent of your intellectual power (intelligence)".
In 1999, an airline company, trying to attract potential customers, said: "It is said that we use only 10% of our intelligence. However, if you fly a flight (company name), you use much more.
However, a group of experts convened by the U.S. National Research Council came to the conclusion that when to move forward in life,
Neither one of us would refuse to let his brain work "to its fullest potential".
The hope of such a statement, like the other equally surprising statements, does not replace hard work. Alas! This unpleasant news did not discourage millions of people. They are still calming themselves down by the belief that the shortest way to fulfill their unrealized desires is simply to unravel the secret of using their enormous and supposedly unused intellectual potential, which they have not yet solved. You can solve this secret and become a star or the author of the next bestseller, say the sellers of wonderful tools to enhance intelligence.
Even more dubious are the suggestions of supporters of the movement "New Age", which offer to improve the psychic skills that supposedly we all possess, with the help of some incomprehensible devices for the brain. The self-appointed psychic Uri Geller argued: "In fact, most of us use only about 10 percent of our brains, if at all. Propagandists like Geller mean that 90% of the brain's psychic abilities are in the hands of ordinary people, who have to exist on scarce ten, have not yet learned how to use them.
Why should brain researchers doubt that 90% of the ordinary brain is not used? For several reasons. First of all, our brain was formed by natural selection. Brain tissue is difficult to grow and use; making up only 2-3% of our body weight, it consumes more than 20% of the oxygen we breathe. It is impossible to imagine that evolution would allow us to waste resources on the scale necessary to build and maintain such an unused organ. And if the presence of a larger brain promotes flexibility that ensures survival and reproduction ("practical results" of natural selection), it is difficult to assume that any small increase in thinking capacity would not be immediately supported by the existing systems of the brain to improve the chances of its owner in a continuous struggle for prosperity and reproduction.
Doubts about 10% are also supported by data from clinical neuralgia and neuropsychology, two disciplines that seek to understand and reduce the effects of brain damage. The loss of much less than 90% of the brain due to an accident or illness almost always has catastrophic consequences.
Look, for example, at the well-known controversy surrounding the unconscious state and subsequent death of Terry Schiavo, a young Florida resident who has been lying in a vegetative state for 15 years. Oxygen deficiency and subsequent cardiac arrest in 1990 destroyed approximately 50% of her brain, her upper lung, and her upper lung.
The last century saw the emergence of supernature brain tracking technologies. Using brain mapping techniques such as electroencephalogram (EEG), positron emission tomography (PET), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers have been able to identify a large number of psychological functions specific to specific brain regions. In non-human animals, and sometimes in humans undergoing neurological treatment, scientists can insert recording probes into the brain. Despite this detailed mapping, no quiet brain areas waiting for new tasks have been identified.
Even simple tasks usually require the intervention of processing areas that are common to virtually the entire brain.
There are two other firmly established principles of neuroscience that create further problems for the myth of 10%. Brain areas that are not used because of injury or illness tend to have one of two results. They either fade or are occupied by adjacent areas that are looking for unused brain areas to colonize them for their own purposes. In any case, a totally usable, unused brain tissue is unlikely to remain out of play for a long time.
In general, as the scientific evidence shows, there is no spare brain "tire" waiting to be installed in place by the industry of self-improvement.