10% Brain Myth: A Fact Or A Fiction?

Several days ago the 10% brain myth bewildered the world once again when the newest Hollywood sci-fi movie “Lucy” thriller showed on screen.

 

 

The myth states that humans only use 10% of their brain capacity, the idea which triggered everybody’s curiosity to know exactly if this is true or no. Likely centuries this speculation became a continual myth of unclear origins. However the 10% brain myth is not based or regarded on any scientific reasons and there are hundreds of credible facts to prove that it is not just wrong but totally bizarre.
On its relation to the latest movie of the year “Lucy” some critics say that the movie tries to rescue the myth a bit by affirming that humans only use a small fraction at a time rather than at all. It started when Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) was kidnapped and implanted with mysterious drugs to test interesting things primarily some kind of time-warping skills. Though it has been proven that the 10% brain myth is a bogus but still 65% of Americans believe in it – according to the survey conducted last year by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

 

The 10% brain myth is demonstrably false for many reasons.

First our brain is an organ and it is active all the time. The brain is a living neurons supported by millions of cells doing certain functions. One renowned professor of psychology and neuroscience at NYU opinionated that people of today maybe freed themselves by the “Blobs” – the term used referring to the dispersed markers of high brain activity which can be seen in the fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging of the human brain. Commonly these blobs are referred to what people think the brain “lighting up”.
Try to watch a movie in an fMRI scanner and it will shows that certain areas of brain like the visual and the auditory cortices will be extensively more active compared to others. When the fMRI images are analyzed the first thing it show are colored splotches. These blobs usually cover small portions of brain image and normally less than 10%, which could appear to the casual observer that the rest of the brain is not working. But still the idea of only “using” a certain area of your brain is misguided. When the brain works on a problem its effectiveness is as much a question of “when” and “where” as it is of “how much”. There are regions of the brain which are specialized compared to others with certain tasks and the activity depends on sequential coordination between those regions. Indeed this only connotes that the brain is complex and a multi-tasking network of tissue.

 

Yet the 10% brain myth is hypnotizing.

But can you imagine it? Or try to think of it deeper, if people use 10% of their brains, imagine how great life would if they could use more? You could have learn French in few minutes, could have memorize the entire content of the book in an hour or maybe write simultaneously using both your right and left hands on the board. That is why the 10 % brain myth is said to be pernicious compared to other fantasies.