Facts about the human brain everyone gets wrong

Nicholas Conley You use a lot more than 10 percent of your brain Oh, man. You’ve heard the old yarn about how humans allegedly use only 10 percent of their brainpower, right? You might’ve even repeated it a few times. Some people find it wonderful to imagine that there’s some mystical 90 percent of untapped cognitive potential that, if accessed, could allow you to think lightning fast, learn 600 new languages, gain awe-inspiring telepathic powers a la Charles Xavier, and maybe even score a B+ on your math test. These possibilities have fueled popular fiction like Lucy, Limitless , and Flight of the Navigator, and people you run into at parties might occasionally suggest that another 30 percent can be unlocked through really potent recreational drugs. Sorry, it’s a load of bunk. As Scientific American explains, humans use 100 percent of their brains, every day. The brain is complex, and there’s no space wasted, which is why brain surgery is so ridiculously complicated: Nicking the wrong cluster of neurons could impact your control of individual toes or fingers or internal organs. Even simple activities like making coffee in the morning involve intricate neural processes from disparate brain zones, like the world’s fastest WhatsApp chat. It’s hard to say where this myth got started. William James hinted at it as far back as 1907. However, PRI argues that it was popularized by Dale Carnegie’s 1936 self-help book How to Win Friends and Influence People, which contained a line about people using only 10 percent of their latent mental ability. Nothing about psionic powers, unfortunately. Brain size doesn’t matter Human beings are ludicrously smart creatures, even though watching enough dumb YouTube videos might suggest otherwise. Considering the massive craniums perched on our spindly human shoulders, it’s easy to believe that human […]

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