The ten percent of the brain myth: a fractional truth

2008 June 4
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By Andy Kaiser
Article ID: 1229

In writing this article, I tried to use ten percent of my brain. I really did. But I got stuck pretty fast on the method of how to actually use only ten percent of my brain. There seem to be many ways to go about it. For example, I could just think this article in my head, and only write down every tenth word. But the results would be incomprehensible. I could decrease my writing quality to 10% of its usual stellar technique. But that would be annoying for any future readers. I could remove 90% of my writing tools, and type this article using only one finger. But that would just slow me down significantly, when I’d be getting the same final result. Wait: I could encode the characters in this article into their base-10 ASCII equivalents. I’d then take the resulting numeric string and increase its value by a factor of 10, then convert the results back from ASCII into plain text. Mathematical perfection. Granted, it would be unreadable mathematical perfection. That’s counterintuitive to the purpose of Digital Bits Skeptic, so maybe that’s not the best idea.

No, as much as I’d love the symbolism, I can’t easily write this article using ten percent of my brain. Yet there are some who argue that’s what everyone does all the time. Everyone, that is, apart from a few special gifted people.

The first time I heard the myth of “you only use 10% of your brain” was when I was very young. Oddly, I was probably about ten. I had a respected family member fill me in. She said that the human potential had yet to be fully realized. Humans had dormant skills and talents. These super-cognitive powers were trapped in the brain, and using them required special training or a lot of luck. She said that there were a few people (she specifically mentioned Edison and Einstein) who used a little more of their brain, and they were able to really understand the world, and create and invent and make life better for all mankind. And, she said, these world-changing scientists only used “maybe twenty percent” of their brains.

Wow! The implications were staggering. I thought, if I could use just twenty percent of my brain, I’d be up there with Einstein and Edison? Not bad. At school, I only paid attention half the time. If I paid attention full-time, then oh, baby: I’d be a genius.

Of course, this analysis is pretty goofy. And it’s meant to be. I’m trying to show how a tool (like the human brain) doesn’t mesh with the idea of partial use. How do you use ten percent of a hammer? The concept doesn’t make sense. Yet we hear it often in pop culture, from referencing revered geniuses like Einstein, or when self-help gurus claim psychic powers or life-changing self-help.

Granted, a brain is far more complex than a hammer. Think of it instead as a collection of tools. But again, are the “10% believers” saying some tools are lying dormant and unused?

If humans use only ten percent of their brains, what is the other unused ninety percent? What tools in the toolbox are never touched?

Let’s look at some detail.

This article in Psychology Today gives several tips to improve brainpower. Note that none of them talk about anything earth-shattering, as is proper for tried and true techniques. These are established methods, from regular exercise to eating your beans.

The theory of multiple intelligences is an educational theory by Howard Gardner. The theory disagrees with the definition claiming a person is either a genius or not, or a smart person or not. Gardner says that if a person is deficient in one cognitive area (for example, math), that person can be above average in another area (for example, music). This concept details how all humans have potential, but motivation and other factors determine if a person uses that skill. To use a personal story, I went to high school. One of my schoolmates was a pretty big guy – that’s “big” as in tall and muscular. He was over six feet, and had naturally powerful muscles, and no body fat. He never worked out, but looked like he spent all his free time at the gym. And, much to the disappointment of the jocks, he had no interest in sports. He was a computer geek like me. But this guy could’ve been phenomenal on the field. He had the skill, yet no desire. This is an example of one who had genius potential (in this case, athleticism), and chose not to use it.

Any conversation about genius-level intelligence should also include information on savant syndrome. This is a classification of the more-popularly termed (and politically-incorrect) “idiot savant“.  These days, you’ll hear doctors refer to it as autism spectrum or savantism. These are people classified as having significant mental limitations with genius-like ability in other areas. Think Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal in the movie “Rain Man”. Is a savant reaching into that supposedly untapped 90% of the brain? No. Some think that savant-like skills are hiding in everyone. But as far as we currently know, savants are that way because of damage to the brain, either by genetics, brain injury or disease. This rewires the brain and memory into what’s been called “exceedingly deep but very, very narrow”. Whether or not some abilities are sacrificed at the expense of others, the overall brain function and results in society are not something most people would call beneficial. There is a performance gain, surely, but also a functional and emotional degradation.

This article talks about the observable brain, and how brain imaging shows we use the entire brain. True, brain scans can show a partial usage of one part of the brain, but this is a snapshot in time. Watch the brain as a subject goes about their life, and you see that all parts of the brain activate as they are needed throughout the day. To use the earlier toolbox analogy: all tools are used, though not all at once.

Another link from the same site talks about the 10% of the brain myth from an evolutionary perspective. Evolution wouldn’t have evolved a brain that’s 90% unused. There would be no advantage in doing so, and would be a waste of energy to maintain. And if such a brain existed, it wouldn’t survive for long: unused neurons, particularly in early development, will degenerate and die.

Some people are smarter than others. Some people are geniuses compared to others. Some people have a brain naturally skilled at math. Some excel at music. Many factors determine these skills, like education, environment, personality, motivation, desire and genetics. I’m certainly no Einstein, and – despite what my mother thinks – I never will be. But Einstein didn’t build his legacy by tapping in to a super-brain power. Like all of us, Einstein was influenced by the physical and environmental factors just mentioned. For those believing the “ten percent of your brain” myth, I have a message: Life is not a Dungeons and Dragons game. Einstein didn’t become a genius by picking up a +10 Sword of Intelligence.

The “ten percent of your brain” myth is just that – a myth. It’s bolstered by two common misperceptions in society: You can get amazing results for little or no work, and there are undiscovered, life-changing secrets available only to a select few. Neither option makes much sense when addressed critically. These sound good, sure, but only to those who think they’re using just ten percent of their brain.

You want to get smarter? Then realize there is no magic pill. Just work hard. Educate yourself. It will happen. Put down that mythical Sword of Intelligence. Pick up a book.


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6 Comments
2008 June 10
David permalink

I’m no Neuroscientist (my wife is), so take this with agrain of salt.

There are many functions that the brain performs which have been localized, either through the study of brain injuries or functional neuro-imaging. There are however functions that have not yet been localized. For example, when my 3 year old sees a dog, even one that is a different breed, color, shape, size, etc than all of the dogs to which he has previously been exposed, he knows what it is. Nobody knows what part of the brain allows him to recognize that he is seeing a dog – so when someone says that you use only 10% of your brain I explain that and say, perhaps it is that we only understand what 10% of the brain is doing and the other 90% is doing the things which occur we don’t know where.

2008 June 13
siukong permalink

I seem to remember reading somewhere that this myth all started with a scientist in the early 20th century being misquoted in a newspaper article. Sadly though, I’ve been unable to track down where I read this.

The results of brain damage show pretty irrevocably that we use ALL of our brain. One should also bear in mind that, being a complicated network of neurons, the brain is not split neatly into discrete functional compartments. This can make it difficult to determine just what a particular area does, but by no means does it signify uselessness.

-”Nobody knows what part of the brain allows him to recognize that he is seeing a dog”

To David, I would say we have at least a crude understanding of quite a bit more than 10% of the brain. And even though we may not know the exact area involved in your example, it’s quite easy to explain given our brain’s tendency to generalize and look for patterns. I don’t know if it’s the case with your son, but young children often use the label ‘doggie’ quite loosely. It’s usually an early-learned word and they often overgeneralize it to most four-legged creatures they see that resemble their rough mental image of a dog (similar to their overuse of the “-ed” past participle with different verbs).

2008 July 27
Andras Varga permalink

It’s like those commercials in which you can get “30% thicker hair”, by using some product. You can’t check that, can you? I’m smarter than most of the people. I use 13,83% of my brain:)

2009 January 5
Adam Roderick permalink

Though I agree that the idea that we use just 10% of our brain is ridiculous considering the lack of understanding we have on how the brain functions, I think the analogy used that compares the human brain to a hammer is ridiculous. A brain can do things like take information from one part of the body, analyze this information, determine an appropriate response and send the appropriate signals putting that response into action. For example if an object is flying at your head, your eyes see this object and those signals are sent to the brain, and the brain analyzes what your eyes see and sends the appropriate signals to the appropriate parts of the body to make you duck. A hammer doesn’t take information from two boards and send a signal to a nail to fasten the two boards together. A human brain, if compared to anything which is a stretch in itself, is most similar to a computer. Well specifically the processor, hard drive, and RAM. It stores permanent and short term information, and processes signals from the body. It’s very possible to use 10% of a hard drive, 10% of RAM, and 10% of a processor in a computer. Therefore it is very probably that you could only use 10% of your brain, but considering we don’t really have an understanding of what 100% of our brain power could accomplish its not possible to know really how much of our brain we use. Who is to say? And furthermore I think it is entirely relative. To think that Einstein or Edison used more of their brains that ordinary people is absurd. A neanderthal may use 20% of it’s brain to create the same fire that I can create using 1%. It’s not possible to measure, but if it was it would be relative to potential which is something that would differ from individual to individual.

2009 January 11
Anna J. Jacobs permalink

It is true that brain scans show that we use all of our brains. in the sense that all our neurons transmit signals. It is not as if physical parts of the brain lie dormant. However just as nine numbers can be combined in an infinite number of ways, so can neural responses. Also, music, learning a new language and many other experiences have been shown to in effect create new neural pathways over time. So when we talk about the brain’s potential, the idea that most adults have achieved use of the 10% of what they could is probably a high estimate. Another thing to consider is that we know very little about the human brain’s potential at this point in history. However anyone who knows anything about the human brain is in complete awe of it. As per Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works”, babies can do certain things automatically, without being taught, that are nearly impossible to teach a machine to do. There is much that we don’t understand yet.

2009 March 3
ty permalink

I believe that you can increase your own intelligence. Look at the polgar sisters in chess. Their dad decided to test if you could create chess grandmasters and started them when they were young and they both became grandmasters, so this idea that women aren’t “spatial” is probably wrong considering one of the sisters beat the greatest of all time, kasparov, more than once I think.
Also just look at all else in life, more practice makes perfect. So I’m stupid in math but I could start thinking in concepts like square roots etc as if it’s a language if I studied it for a while I’m sure. And I’m not talking about becoming more familiar with the subject alone, I’m talking about training my brain to be a genius in math.
Intelligence can be broken down into three categories that I see:
a. speed
b. depth
c. creative intelligence

I leave memory out because it’s not the same subject I think. Unless you’re talking people with extreme amnesia, everybody’s got enough of it.

Speed is measured by how fast you can duplicate X amount of data.

Depth is measured by how many aspects and inferences you can grasp from X amount of data. It is not how much you can recombine data in new imaginative ways but it is close to that. This is from a postulate that there’s a finite amount of directly related data you can grasp from the original ‘X amount of data’ pool without going into imagination. This is a shaky point maybe though, but there must be a difference between creation and deep duplication.

Creative intelligence is how imaginatively you can recombine data you created or perceived. High practical creative intelligence would be useful to innovation engineers for example. High impractical creative intelligence would involve artists (I think aesthetics is necessary) but the distinction is unnecessary once you got the idea.

There is another factor which might not be related to intelligence but to chronic emotional states or something, and that’s “Why do some people become interested in a subject (or life in general for that matter) and some not?” So the factor is interest. But I have to think that if someone has an insane amount of creative intelligence than this would override their chronic boredom emotional level and so they’d remain interested. Interest can also be heightened in medical science if you’ve got cancer so maybe interest can boil down to necessity or necessity/creative intelligence ratio in a person.

Speed and depth can be improved with work and creative intelligence maybe can be improved but that’s the one that’s hardest to improve probably. And it’s also the one that is most valuable because speed and depth genuises are a dime a dozen, hence “Intuition is more important that knowledge” -Einstein. Also ” Imagination is more important than knowledge” -Einstein

One last point is Einstein is wrong.
The correct message is “Intuition is more important than knowledge if you can bring that intuition from the outer perimeter of your awareness into your center and turn it into a clear concept, so you can understand your own thought. Raw untapped intuition that stays totally foggy as an idea is useless.” -me.

Also, I’m hearing on radio that science is saying that the brain isn’t even the source of thought, and that it’s possibly only taking part in the after effect of the thought that you have, thus smarter animals have bigger brains. So an analogy is the nervous system doesn’t give us pain, it’s the after effect of some other cause giving us pain, it’s a channel, and so is the brain a channel. One thought is “what part the brain is looking at the pictures coming through the eye so you can see.

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