The functioning of the brain: fables
How much of our brains do we actually use? How many cells do our brains exist? There are many different answers to these and other questions about the brain, and many of them are fables. In the article below you will find the real answers, and the ways in which these discoveries were made.
Do we really only use 10% of our brain capacity?
This is an old myth that has spread far. Because the story is still spreading, it is necessary to take a critical look at this question. How much of our brain capacity do we actually use, and how do we use it?
This "fact" is sometimes used to explain psychic gifts and the soul, but also to explain why we keep losing our car keys: "We use only 10% of our brains, so logically that a lot of information is lost." What if we can make sure that we can use the 'other 90%', imagine what kind of great things man could be capable of!
Fortunately, this last statement can be easily debunked with some logical thinking. Our brains use 20% of the total energy in the body. If the total energy consumption of the brain were to be increased tenfold, the brain would have to use 200% of the energy in the body.
In reality, it appears that the brain works very efficiently. No clear relationship has yet been found between, for example, intelligence and brain capacity. It has also long been shown that an increase in brain activity is bad. This is called an insult in the medical world (English: seizure). Such an insult can even lead to permanent brain damage in severe cases. So we do not have to look for a way to make our brains 'more active'.
To understand why our brains deal so efficiently with the 'space' they have, we need to look at their development, starting with a single cell, until finally our brains are completely formed. Babies and small children generally have much more brain cells than adults. This is because during the growing up there is a 'mass mortality' among the neurons. During this mortality, only the neurons that have made connections with other neurons remain. Although it may be a bit exaggerating to say that all the neurons remaining after this mortality are essential for the proper functioning of the brain, it appears that even damaging a relatively small part of these cells is the function of the body ( negative).
Although we do not use the full capacity of our brains, we can say that the part that we do use (it varies from person to person, depending on the development to adult), is used efficiently.
