My favorite fix for the 10% of our brains myth.

As a first blog post I'd like to start out with something easy.

I suspect most people with an interest in neuroscience often meet people and end up having to dispel the myth where someone claims we only use 10% of our brains.

The story I have settled on to explain goes something like this.

Imagine aliens visited your house while you were watching TV. If you couldn't explain to them how watching TV works, they could try to understand by counting the time each of the pixels were on and off. They might end up saying something to what people say about the brain like "It seems like these humans only use 30% of their TVs. I wonder why they don't use all 100% all the time? Wouldn't that be better?". 

Then bring it back to "It seems like humans only fire 10% of the neurons in their brain at once. Why don't they use all 100% all the time? wouldn't that be better?"



This is nice because the layperson understands why they don't want to watch a white screen. This can lead to the comparison of pixels and neurons. A pixel conveys information both when it is on and when it is off just like a neuron. When a neuron is on it means something, but it also means something when is a neuron is turned off and thus we really use 100% of our brain even if only a small portion of the neurons fire at any point in time.