Yes, but the ASPCA is gonna be all over you!

100% of what?

If you have 10 tools in a work shop and over the course of 10 days you use all 10 tools, then you have made use of 100% of your tools in the work shop.

If this is the what . . . then the answer is yes we have seen it, and we use 100% of our brains.

All the processing centers in the brain are used.

Efficiency is a concept that represents a goal. As new goals are created efficiency must be reexamined.

Potential is unquantifiable unless you know EVERYTHING about a system. Which clearly we do not.

We use different parts of our brain at different times so we basically use most of it over a period of time. I looked it up when someone said that to me. So we are only using parts of it at different times but if we monitored the different parts used over time we would see most of it is used depending on what we are doing.

Thanks for a good explanation my friend

Look at any number of MRT (I think those are the right letters) scans and tell me how much of the brain you see lit up. Far greater than 10%. Even the simplest activities such as sitting straight up and breathing at the same time take more than 10%. Different parts are used at different times. But we wouldn't have evolved useless parts.

P-O-T-E-N-T-I-A-L

(Are you guys ignoring the blonde?)

thanx interestng very interesting

No, I just disagree. Most people are using most of their potential; they're just stupid. Could you imagine the brain running at full potential all the time? That would take so much energy we wouldn't have much left for anything else, we'd have to eat almost constantly, and we'd just turn into a bumch of amorphous blobs sitting on our asses and thinking all the time.

When a person uses a number, in a percentage, it should have some 'quantity' related meaning.

Clearly many of us, as people, are only realizing the smallest fraction of our 'potential'. I don't disagree at all!

But to me, its doesn't make ANY sense at all to talk about " 10% of the brain " or "100% of the brain " without having a clear sense of exactly what you mean by "percent of", and I'm glad several people in this thread are exploring this line of thought.

There are a wide varieties of metrics a person could use to quantify degree of brain usage, and I suspect that most of those would have little to do with a either intelligence or 'potential'

GalendGirl,

I'm not sure if you are joking about people ignoring your point - I do think that there are several different, interwoven topics being discussed in this thread, and that its a 'good thing' for people to debunk the "10% brain use" myth, and that its also a 'good thing' for you to remind us that we are (brain usage aside) not realizing our potentials.

It seems like most people who want to say "we use X percent of our brains" do so because they want scientific backing for this basic (if subjective) fact that we are not 'realizing our potential'. The flawed premise is often: If we used a larger percentage of our not-fully-utilized brain, we would 'realize' more of our 'potential'.

I wonder how many DIFFERENT ways are there to fabricate some kind of (potentially useless) measure of 'percentage of brain activity' ?

Off the cuffs, some thoughts on "percentage of brain use" metrics:

-> What percent of the neurons in a person's brain are 'the thinking type' of neuron? (You could do that by number of neuron, or by mass of the brain, or by amount of energy used, etc etc)

-> What percentage of the maximum level of metabolic activity (measured in calories per minute, maybe?) in a brain is that brain currently engaged in? Could be an instantaneous number, or a time average over a day, whatever. (And for the time average, I think you would WANT a moderate number - it would probably be very unhealthy and stressful for a person to be running their brain at the maximum metabolic rate all the time.)

-> What percentage of the brain's volume is receiving 'increased blood flow' during a particular activity (which, some researchers say, does not always correlate with nervous system activity)

-> what percentage of a brain (by volume? by approximate number of neurons?) shows increased activity on an fMRI scan?

All of these casually thrown together metrics have a different meaning, and my point is that without a clear and specific understand of what what means by "percent of", any conversation about us using "X% of our brains" is just nonsense masquerading as understanding.

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GalendGirl, I doubt any of these metrics address questions like: "Am I letting my insecurities interfere with my success in life? " nor "How much more effectively could I solve this problem if I relaxed?" nor "Am I in good communication with my intuition?".

The original myth was used by new age folks, and the paranormal believers to back up the notion that you can be psychic if you just used more of your brain.

Its old school, and the study that was used to back it was flawed in the extreme.

I think its rather pointless to talk about potential until you know how a think works in its entirety.

We do not have a complete understanding of the brain, and thus cannot access potential, we can access averages from tests which by there very nature will have some bias, but not potential in any kind of objective way.

That's a really good point you make Jeremy.

I think we most likely do use our brains to a very large capacity. Although I would hesitate to say that we use 100% of our brain's potential, even given your "over time" scenario. The reason being that soemtimes we simply aren't aware of what all we can do with it. It would be analogous to someone coming in your shop and showing you something new you can do with an old tool, and you say, "Wow! I would have never thought to us that tool for that purpose, but it works great!". So there you have a case where you were actually using a tool, but not even using the tool to it's full potential.

Like recently I learned some really interesting new insights from Chaos Theory. I don't believe that those insights used any new parts of my brain. I'm just forming new ideas within the preexisting parts of my brain that I always use.

The brain really isn't much different from muscles. If you are using your finger muscles to type with, and then you go wash some dishes using your fingers to scrub with, and so on. Then are you using your finger muscles 100%?

Well, consider that you suddenly become interested in learning to play the piano, now you are teaching your finger muscles to do something entirely different. But are you actaully tapping into something that you weren't tapping into before? I don't think so. You're just using what you've always been using in a brand new way.

Also, finger muscles are capable of playing pianos, organs, zylophones, clarinets, trumpets, etc, etc, etc, not to mention a myriad of things that finger muscles can do that has nothing to do with making music.

Well, if we speak in terms of all the things that finger muscles can do, and how many tasks we actually use them for, then we are only using a very small percent of what they are capable of doing.

But at the same time, how many instruments can we practice? How many other tasks can put our fingers to? There's a real constraint on time.

The brain is not unlike finger muscles either. You don't just sit down at the piano and play it. You need to learn to play it and that takes practice. The same thing is true for understanding intelletual things. You don't just do one math problem, for example, and fully understand what's going on. You may need to do many math problems to learn how to do them (just like practicing a piece on a piano to teach your fingers how to move).

When it comes to using our brains, we're probably as lazy as we are at teaching our fingers to do new things.

Also, reading books is good, but just getting a bunch of superficial ideas isn't really learning. That would be like watching someone else do math problems and think that we're actually learning how to do them ourselves, Or watching someone else play the piano and thinking that we're learning how to play the piano ourselves.

Reading books is like watching someone else do something. To really become involved we need to think things through for ourselves. That more like doing our own math problems or practicing our own instruments.

Otherwise what we're really doing is just observing the knowledge of others, running with their conclusions, but never truly having a solid understanding of it ourselves.

To actually USE the brain, is to exercise it and build up neurological pathways. That's done by repetition no different from working out muscles to learn to play an instrument.

Actually if we want ask what percentage of our brain potential we actually use it's probably more like 0.000001%

Just like the tools in our workshop. Do we actually use those tools for every thing they can actually be used to do? Probably not even close.

There are several misconceptions at work here. The fact that a brain cell "fires" and thus produces heat and electricity, does not mean it has done much other than burn blood glucose. fMRI scans of the a brain showing activity do not mean the brain is doing much just because it is burning fuel.

The brain develops by learning. As discussed previously, working the brain in memory and problem solving causes new synapses to be produced and data is stored for future memories and computations. A series of brain cells which have produced many synapses per cell can work at much greater efficiency than and brain with poorer development even though both brains may show the same level of activity and burn the same calories. The brain that has worked hard to develop the complex synapse network would be reaching ever closer to it's "potential" while the undeveloped brain is still chuckling over the reruns of "Bevis and Butthead". As the cells develop neural networks the information processing power growth is geometric.

It takes no more energy for a brain cell to fire ten synapses as five. The energy used is the basic metabolism of the cell, not the network. (BTW, I don't have a clue how many total a brain cell can handle)

Galendgirl is correct. The issue is potential, not the number of brain cells that eat sugar.

Think of it as each brain cell has a job walking dogs. What is the maximum potential for income? The answer is based on how many leashes (synapses) can be effectively held by the brain cell. Walking two dogs uses much the same energy as walking six but produces only one third the income.

In a neural net data processing system the extra synapses increase the POTENTIAL of data and data processing by the exponential power of the increased connections.

In addition, the actual potential of the human mind is a function of the utilization of the ID. The ID is the real key to human mind development.

The ID. A story for another day.

Maybe the issue is that we have a different interpretations of the word "potential?" It can mean something quantitative or qualitative...sounds like you are interpreting the first (full steam ahead/all circuits firing) and my interpretation is about achievement and higher levels of aptitude, inspiration, etc.

Semantics? Whodathunk?

I love your reasoning Abra, I couldn't agree more and there is a good bit of good research to back up these ideas.


I agree just becuase something is doing something does not mean its purposeful.

HOWEVER.

The brain consumes at peak 12 watts or so of energy. This is very expensive consumption in the world of animal brains.

Evolution has created a brain that tries its best not to waste energy.

Thus if energy is used, its used purposefully.

Seems to me to be false dichotomy.

You can have both, its not a vs battle. Correct me if I am wrong I have not seen this point argued anywhere in this thread?

There are far too many examples.

You can have both...absolutely! My focus on potential is probably just unique to my way of thinking about life in general.

Bushido,

Just to be clear, you are talking about 'the potential of the human brain as an organ,' which is different from, say, 'a human beings 'potential' to create what they choose.'

Exactly! Which is why that metric is probably meaningless! Which is why we should be suspicious of 'brain use' metrics that aren't explained/explored in detail.




I trust you are joking to illustrate a point - a person can 'develop' their brain in the way you describe and still be immature, or have poor taste, or even be authentically stupid in areas of life or cognition unrelated to the areas of development.

Now I'm not saying that you ever said otherwise, but just to be clear, I think the concept of "potential" that you invoke here, would still be suspect as a 'useful metric.' If more connections was greater potential, what would 100% be? Every cell connected to every other cell?




Yes, it seems like everyone has something correct to say. I agree with Bushido, your statement seems to imply a false dichotomy, but I may be misunderstanding you. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "The issue is..." Personally, in my opinion only, the main issue was "some 'human potential' advocates spread lies about measuring the brain's effectiveness as an organ."

Metalwing, I'm not very knowledgable about the ID, and consider the traditional concept of it as 'yet another useful but incomplete model of the mind' but I absolutely agree that such models have more to do with 'human potential' than any of the brain physiology based metrics suggested so far.

Abra, I just want to be sure I understand. You are talking about activities, yes? You are saying "we may be doing 0.000001% of all the possible activites we could engage in"? Or we may be developing 0.000001% of all the possible skills we could develope? Or something similar?