In article <76gsm9$am6$1 at fremont.ohsu.edu>, Matt Jones <jonesmat at ohsu.edu>
wrote:
> In article <007001be339f$c2b34de0$231bfbd0 at default> RonBlue, rcb5 at MSN.COM> writes:
> >>ninety percent was for. But I guess my question is: What do "people"
(namely,
> >>those who have some kind of background in neuroscience) mean when they say
> >>that we only use ten percent? Does that mean that there are actually places
> >>in everyone's brain that remain dormant, never, or hardly ever, used?
Or does
> >>it mean that at any one time we have ten percent of our brain capacity
> >>functioning?
>> After almost ten years in neuroscience, I've heard this plenty of times
> from laypeople and in popular science tv shows and books, but I've never
> once heard another card-carrying neuroscientist say anything like this.
>> I wonder where this idea comes from in the first place? What sort of
> _experiment_ could you do to figure out what fraction of the brain is
> being used (and you'd also have to have a very precise definition of
> "being used": just because a cell isn't firing an action potential
> doesn't mean it's not being used)?
>> I think we use our whole brain all the time. Now, whether or not we're
> using it efficiently is another matter.
>> Matt Jones
The measurement you could do is something like the ratio of maximal
glucose use vs. average glucose use. Or maximal firing rate for a neuron
vs. average. Obviously, if you knew anything about how the brain works,
one realizes that this is stupid, which is why no card carrying
neuroscientists ever actually state it. The only time the brain would
actually be in full use is when you are about to die, having a stroke, or
having a grand mal seizure. So this is why it's silly. The assumption is
that the brain is something akin to a power plant, which it is obviously
nothing like.
