What percentage of our brain do we actually use?

More or Less: Behind the Stats

BBC

Business, Mathematics, Science, News Commentary, News

4.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s episode of More or Less we interrogate a widely circulated myth relating to how much of our brain power we can access and engage. Ever heard someone say, “You know we can only use 10% of our brains, right?”. Well, they’re wrong. It’s the stuff of make believe and far-fetched movie plots. Science and evidence based research tells us so - and has, it turns out, been telling us so for decades…politely, if impatiently. So, then, if not 10%…what percentage of our brain do we actually use? From dark matter neurons to super-highway synapse and ghost cells that serve as inert echoes of our evolutionary past - with the help of two leading experts in the field, we crack open the figurative cranium of this debate and rummage around for the definitive truth. Presenter: Paul Connolly Producers: Jon Bithrey, Natasha Fernandes Editor: Richard Vadon Sound Engineer: Rod Farquhar (Artificial intelligence brain network/Getty)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and many thanks for downloading the Morales podcast with me, Paul Connelly.
0:07.8	We are quite literally at your service when it comes to making sense of numbers in the
0:12.5	news and elsewhere in everyday life.
0:15.0	Now, last week, whilst sat around the dinner table at my in-laws house, someone who
0:19.8	shall remain nameless stood to state with authority that we only used 10% of what brain
0:24.9	cells we have, knocking and rumbling around inside our craniums.
0:29.6	I came to it smugly with, not at all, to the programme I sometimes present more or less,
0:35.1	dismissed that as a widely circulated nonsense years ago with fantasy, the stuff of movie
0:40.0	plots.
0:42.7	That's true, by the way.
0:44.2	Tim and Professor Sophie Scott, director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at
0:48.8	University College London, retired that myth back in 2014, and discussed it somewhat
0:54.7	suspect origins whilst they were at us.
0:57.8	So this claim then that we use only 10% of our brains, where did it come from, do we
1:02.2	know?
1:03.2	It actually comes from a self-help book from nearly a hundred years ago, and the idea
1:06.3	there was it was sort of saying it, you can do more with your life, and the particular
1:12.5	unfortunate example that gave us, you're only using 10% of the brain, you can do so much
1:16.6	more if you use more of your brain.
1:18.6	And if after listening to her, you still believe that you're only using 10% of your brain,
1:23.1	well, you may be right.
1:24.9	Back at that dinner table, these still anonymous someone fires back with, well, if you're so
	...

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