Breaking Brain Myth: How much do you use?

 There are some science myths that are very deeply ingrained in our society. 

One such myth is regarding our brain and how much do we use it. There are many numbers floating around, depending on who are you talking with! Some say, we use just 2 % of our brain, while some claim it to be 4 or 10 %. Whatever the numbers are, I usually become frustrated with such claims. These notions became more popularized because of media- specially Hollywood films and TV shows. I can distinctly remember a show where one can just take a pill, and suddenly, they are able to use all of their brain- and thus resulting in great memory retention, information processing to catch bad guys and saving the day. 

Unfortunately, this is not true- at least using our whole brain at special occasions. The potential range of memory retention and information processing can vary largely based on lot of factors. You need to understand that a normal healthy brain has mechanisms to actually 'forget' memories or to avoid/ ignore some information that was received. There's a brain disorder where the patient can't forget any moment of their life; and let me tell you, that's not a happy recipe.

But the fact that I want to emphasise is that, we mostly use all of our brain, spontaneously, most of the time. .There's not much of a respite. Every region of our brain becomes specialised at one task or the other, but at the same time, remain robust enough (at least upto certain age) to change its' ways. There's hardly any region or part that is sitting idle. If for some reason (like an injury or trauma), some small part is unable to function properly or not function at all, sometimes that part can take up new tasks as well. 

And for those of you, who are still not decided- you can look up someone's fMRI results (or schedule one for yourself)! fMRI is an indirect method of recording brain activity while the person execute any task. And you would see, even simple tasks (at least simple by our standards) elicit much more than 2 % or such percentage of your brain.

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You might like a visual demonstration for understanding or listening to a topic. Make sure that you check out the accompanying video - Breaking Brain Myths.