Do We Really Use Only 10% Of Our Brain?

It's one of the more popular myths out there: We only use 10% of our brain's power. Watch as Anthony finally puts this myth to rest.

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Do People Only Use 10 Percent Of Their Brains?
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"It is well established that the brain uses more energy than any other human organ, accounting for up to 20 percent of the body's total haul."

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"We've often been told that we only use about 10 percent of our brains. Famous people such as Albert Einstein and Margaret Mead have been quoted as stating a variation of it."

The Ten Percent Myth

The 10 Percent of Brain Myth
"Chances are high that you have heard someone make a similar comment at some time or another. The popularly and widely spread belief that we only use or have access to 10 percent of our brain's power is often used to speculate about the extent of human abilities if only we could utilize our brain's full capacity."

Do we really use only 10 percent of our brains?
"Whenever I venture out of the Ivory Tower to deliver public lectures about the brain, by far the most likely question I can expect as the talk winds up is, "Do we really only use 10 percent of our brains?" The look of disappointment that usually follows when I say it isn't so strongly suggests that the 10-percent myth is one of those hopeful shibboleths that refuses to die simply because it would be so darn nice if it were true."

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[NadheerNazrulla]

What I heard is its not 10% of your brain. Its 10% of your brain's potential. For lifting 1kg weight using your hand you use 100% of your hand muscles. But that is not your hand's full potential. It can lift more weight than that. Similarly, the concept is we use only 10% of our brain's potential. Means our brains are capable of doing more things than we use it to do. Those may not be psychic abilities. But may be speed, memory etc. I'm not sure about this. I read it somewhere.

[Majid_Osman]

He just ruined the movie "Lucy" :c now i can't be super badass ;-;

[XHD]

Sounds more to me like 65% of Americans only use 10% of their brain :P

[thomasgreen]

Everyone called me liar at school when i said that the brain uses 100% of it's power.

[imk]

Actually i never taught that people use 10% of their brain, i taught that we actually use only 10% of our brains power or potential...that made more sense to me!

[JM]

No, I believe we do use only 10% of our brain. A neurologist I spoke to said that we use every part of our brain, but only to 10% of its capacity. For example, imagine setting your phone to 10% brightness. Every part of the phone is still working, right? Just not to its full capacity, which is at 100%. And that's what people mean by the thing about using 100% of your brain. But I wonder, what if it's set that way to protect you and give you a longer life? Would having your brain at 100% cause you to die sooner (like a phone's battery running at 100%)?

[Earth_Shield]

They need to reword that, we only have access to 10% percent of our brain. Our brains are 100% active all the time. Right now we are only able to access certain things such as memory, emotions, and the 5 senses. Imagine if we could access more of our brains capacity. We could control our own body, we could change our eye color the color we want it, we could grow our hair instantly to the length we want it or the color we want it. Right now, we only have 2 strands of DNA and 2 Double Helices, that makes it 3% of our current DNA that we use, there is another 97% of our DNA that they think is 'junk'. I myself am starting to access more of my brain and my DNA is currently adding more strands. My awareness has shifted greatly and its still going on as we speak. I just wanted to share this info with you guys, I know some of you may not believe it. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion

[name]

250 IQ?The kid probably was a genius, we should raise all the kids like that.

[James-ogcx]

I use all of mine, but I have definitely seen people who use less than 1% of their brains.

[ThatDAPTV]

Honestly, I believe we do in fact use 100% of our brains. All areas of the brain are active at all times; controlling bodily functions and movement, sustaining organs, rejuvenating cells, and etc., however, only 10% of the mental capacity is put to use. Mental capacity is the sufficient understanding to comprehend in a general way the situation in which one finds oneself and the nature, purpose, and consequence of any act or transaction into which one proposes to enter. So mental capacity involves the basic methods of thinking, such as, comprehension, critical thinking, learning, creative thinking, imagination, memory, artistic expression, and many other interesting mental skills.

Just imagine if a person had the mental capability to naturally control how fast their body rejuvenates cells to promote instant healing or even shut off pain sensitivity at will with out using any drugs. That would be awesome, but it would require a higher mental capacity in order to understand the complex concept of controlling cell growth.

Brain function and mental capacity are two different things. 100% of the human brain is indeed used, without mental capacity, you have no mental capability. 

[Seeker]

You've probably heard that we only use 10% of our brain's power, but that's not exactly true: Do We Really Use Only 10% Of Our Brain?

[darredenko]

My theory:

Imagine a lightbulb. Plug it in, hit the switch and boom, it lights up. It's pretty much using 100% of itself to produce the light, however, feeding it 10x more power will make it 10x brighter (just raw numbers of course, but just the idea) and it's still using 100% of itself. Same thing with the brain here, you're using 100% of the brain to remember something (or 100% of whatever part holds memory) but the actual potential goes beyond that. Remembering something can be either hard, or easy, but what if the full potential actually allowed us to re-live what we experienced from that particular memory rather than the memory being bits and pieces of the whole event.

Example:
10% - You've lost your car keys, you're trying to remember where you put them. What you're going to do is to try to remember what you've done up until the point where you know you had your car keys the last time. Sometimes we have a lot of pieces that makes it easy, as in a lot of small events that you can link together up to the actual part you want to remember. Sometimes, we don't have enough pieces to make the connections to actually remember where we put the keys.

100% - You would be able to visualize inside your head exactly where, how and when you stepped into your front door, exactly what you did, where, when and so on leading up to where you put down your keys. Remembering is no longer an effort because, it's all in your head, you can access it and analyze it at any given time. Think about those times when you say "oh I've seen that before". That sounds to me like it must mean, that whatever you just saw has been stored in your brain ever since you first saw it, how else would you recognize it?

Other theories are things such as just controlling the brain. There's a numerous things we can control, like, I can kick my door if I want to, but something I can't control is my heart beating. The 10% could very well be just things we are able to control right now, (limbs, eyes, bla bla) and the remaining 90% are things we can't control but happen automatically or doesn't happen at all. Take chameleons for example, they are able to change the color of their "skin" to blend in and other chameleon stuff. To do this, they are separating some kind of crystals underneath their pigments, that allows certain light to be reflected (e.g more space between crystals - red reflection, less space - blue reflection. Just youtube it, you'll understand). They are actually able to control tiny cells/particles or whatever the hell it is in their bodies, at will. What if we could control something as simple as eye color, changing the very small things that makes our eyes a certain color and change it to something else?

[cruros]

You know, I have seen some people that I think only use 10% of their brain lol.

[RocksmithPdl]

if we used/control 100% of our brain why cant we control our metabolism? Why cant we make our 100% "Controllable" to do what we want?

[avanishpank]

lemme try to say this in more simpler way, the way in which more people can relate to it

take an example of a body builder and another guy who dont hit gym.so obviosly you know what you are capable of 'strengthwise' or 'growing muscleswise', but we we never hear someone saying that humans (most of them) only use certain percentage of their strength developing or muscle developing capability....now take that same concept an apply it to brain

[terminaldeity]

In evolutionary terms, 5000 years is not a long time. There's nothing to support the claim that people are inherently smarter now than they were back then in terms of brain function. Yes, we have much more information at our disposal, but that doesn't mean we are biologically more intelligent. Additionally, being intelligent does not mean you simply use more of your brain. It has more to do with neuronal connections and brain structure than volume.

[Norimarisu]

OMG! THANKS YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO !!!
Thank you for the links, thank you !
This is one of those dormant topics for me. The ones where you think about from time to time, wonder and sometimes look up some info but then upon not finding what you look for you move to other things. Last time I thought about it I left a tweet to you guys (among other users) so I'm just gonna go ahead and assume you read it.

[GiulerPowerGamer]

So the movie "Lucy" is total Bullshit?

[MrTug]

What I want to know is that would happen if we could use all or a large portion of the brain all at once at one task? Like if someone's brain was using 100% of its power to try to lift an object telekinetically

[KaldraJayd]

Well I'm glad you've come to terms with it.