Do humans really use only 10 to 20 percent of their brains?

There are many different nonscientific answers to this question. A wife might argue that her husband uses less than 10 percent of his brain at times, a coach often tells his players that they aren’t using their heads enough, and we often think that our politicians don’t use their brains at all. The truth is that there is no way to quantify how much of our brains we use at any given time. Humans definitely use more than 10 to 20 percent of their brains, so this myth is definitely false.

We are getting closer to understanding how we use our brains. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a new technique that is being used to investigate which parts of the brain are active during different mental activities. Functional MRI measures changes in blood flow within the brain in response to various stimuli.

This isn’t a direct measure of brain-cell activity but it gives us a better idea how the brain works.

So maybe someday we can place George Bush and Bode Miller in a functional MRI and really find out what’s going on inside their noggins.

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"Do humans really use only 10 to 20 percent of their brains?" was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 5:17 am.