How much of our brain do we use?
- Thread starter icest0rm
- Start date
From my understanding of the brain, that statistic is garbage. 90% of the brain is made up of glial cells. For the longest time scientists thought their only function was to hold neurons in place. "Glial" means glue (in Latin?). To this day, scientists don't really know what they do. I think the best studies so far show that glial cells act as support cells for the neurons.
I'm guessing the "only use 10% of the brain" statistic comes from scientists not really knowing what 90% of the brain does (and not wanting to damage their egos to admit it
).
I'm guessing the "only use 10% of the brain" statistic comes from scientists not really knowing what 90% of the brain does (and not wanting to damage their egos to admit it
).There are some uses of the brain that most of us just cannot utilize. I watched this programme called the KGB files (or something) and there was video footage of this woman who could move things with her mind! They put plastic boxes over the objects and she could still do it! Seriously, it was very impressive and you could tell it wasn't a trick! She undertook experiments with them and she even managed to stop a frogs heart beating from the power of her thoughts alone.
She then did it on a willing volunteer (a man) and she got his heartbeat right down too. She nearly stopped it completely!
She was a scruffy looking woman and you wouldn't look twice at her in the street. They had a few people who could do things like this and they were going to use them as secret weapons, however the woman died and I'm not sure what happened to the others. It was all fascinating though!
She then did it on a willing volunteer (a man) and she got his heartbeat right down too. She nearly stopped it completely!
She was a scruffy looking woman and you wouldn't look twice at her in the street. They had a few people who could do things like this and they were going to use them as secret weapons, however the woman died and I'm not sure what happened to the others. It was all fascinating though!
The whole 10% of are brain thing is just a myth you could say roughly at any one time we are using approximately 10% of our brain, the brain has very specialized sections and lobes that do different task over a average day you use 95-100% of you brain. It not set at any one performance speed either: if it’s a Sunday and your watching TV your brain is not doing much, if you taking a ACT exam your brain is cooking!
Uh, are you sure that wasn't the X-files?
Yep, its a myth. We use every bit of our brains. Einstein wasn't always right:
http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html
invisibleone
Registered Senior Member
what about altered states of consciousness? this is obviously part of the 100% that we use, yet it remains unused a great deal of the time. what about right brain/left brain seperation? most of us use one hemisphere or the other primarily, or is this incorrect?
eburacum45
Valued Senior Member
Urban legend, definitely.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_028.html
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_028.html
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Well that sure makes sense
Homo sapiens pays a huge price for these huge brains. If our babies were born as fully developed as herbivores -- who can stand up, see just fine, start walking very soon, and think well enough to follow their parents -- their heads would be so big that they couldn't possibly fit through the birth canal.
Even if they were only as well developed as dogs -- who can barely crawl and can't open their eyes for two weeks -- they still wouldn't fit.
The only way humans can reproduce is for our babies to be born so young that they are as dumb as a sack of hammers. The only thing that works is their mouth, so they can suckle. Hands, feet, eyes, the brain centers that control all the rest of their body are so retarded at birth that it takes as long as a year before they can do some of the most elementary and important human activities like walking. Their brain at birth is a fraction of its full grown size, and it still barely fits through the birth canal.
No other mammal is born with a head thicker than any other part of its body. No other female mammal goes through as much agony in childbirth as humans. Hours in labor, torturous birthing. Elephants have a lifespan similar to ours, yet they carry their babies more than twice as long and they hit the ground ready to knock down a few small trees and to grab the tail of the elephant in front of them to make a Disney parade.
Our babies are helpless while their brains finish growing to full size outside the womb, and their parents have a tremendous responsibility to keep them from falling into the clutches of scavengers (at least up until a few millennia ago).
It's comforting to find out that all those extra brain cells are actually used. Otherwise this birthing issue would be an evolutionary dead end.
Homo sapiens pays a huge price for these huge brains. If our babies were born as fully developed as herbivores -- who can stand up, see just fine, start walking very soon, and think well enough to follow their parents -- their heads would be so big that they couldn't possibly fit through the birth canal.
Even if they were only as well developed as dogs -- who can barely crawl and can't open their eyes for two weeks -- they still wouldn't fit.
The only way humans can reproduce is for our babies to be born so young that they are as dumb as a sack of hammers. The only thing that works is their mouth, so they can suckle. Hands, feet, eyes, the brain centers that control all the rest of their body are so retarded at birth that it takes as long as a year before they can do some of the most elementary and important human activities like walking. Their brain at birth is a fraction of its full grown size, and it still barely fits through the birth canal.
No other mammal is born with a head thicker than any other part of its body. No other female mammal goes through as much agony in childbirth as humans. Hours in labor, torturous birthing. Elephants have a lifespan similar to ours, yet they carry their babies more than twice as long and they hit the ground ready to knock down a few small trees and to grab the tail of the elephant in front of them to make a Disney parade.
Our babies are helpless while their brains finish growing to full size outside the womb, and their parents have a tremendous responsibility to keep them from falling into the clutches of scavengers (at least up until a few millennia ago).
It's comforting to find out that all those extra brain cells are actually used. Otherwise this birthing issue would be an evolutionary dead end.
Fraggle Rocker,
Ahh, but there is also an evolutionary advantage to being born with underdeveloped brains. They are more adaptable. Because so, humans can adapt to their worlds better, learn languages that are in constant change at an incredible rate, and recover from brain damage. Once the brain becomes developed it becomes pretty well set. You can still change it to some degree, but not nearly at the rate of when we were say 2 or 3 years old.
I think the old saying partially applies....
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Ahh, but there is also an evolutionary advantage to being born with underdeveloped brains. They are more adaptable. Because so, humans can adapt to their worlds better, learn languages that are in constant change at an incredible rate, and recover from brain damage. Once the brain becomes developed it becomes pretty well set. You can still change it to some degree, but not nearly at the rate of when we were say 2 or 3 years old.
I think the old saying partially applies....
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Is it true...?
I read somewhere that, at birth, a baby can make all the sounds needed to speak every single language on Earth. I certainly can't now. Heck, I have trouble with rolling my r's when I TRY to speak Spanish. I also heard that if one wishes to learn a different language, they should learn it before the age of ten.
I suppose the 10-12 age catergory is when you need to give up on teaching the dog. There was a newspaper article that a relative sent to me about a study that proved that people with a minimum of 5 years of musical trianing before the age of 12 have a (I forget the percentage) better memory than others. I've been playing piano since I was six, and can kind of see their point. I mean, I've aced a few tests without studying, but, WHY?
-niv
p.s
oh, look at that, i'm
at 99 posts...
dare i make another
before midnight?
I read somewhere that, at birth, a baby can make all the sounds needed to speak every single language on Earth. I certainly can't now. Heck, I have trouble with rolling my r's when I TRY to speak Spanish. I also heard that if one wishes to learn a different language, they should learn it before the age of ten.
I suppose the 10-12 age catergory is when you need to give up on teaching the dog. There was a newspaper article that a relative sent to me about a study that proved that people with a minimum of 5 years of musical trianing before the age of 12 have a (I forget the percentage) better memory than others. I've been playing piano since I was six, and can kind of see their point. I mean, I've aced a few tests without studying, but, WHY?
-niv
p.s
oh, look at that, i'm
at 99 posts...
dare i make another
before midnight?
My dog is 12 and I taught her a new trick: walk away on command… I growl at her for staring at me while I'm eating, now I can growl for no good reason and she walks away.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Re: Part Bear?
A lot of this came out when that movie "The Bear" was out. A lot of people who work in the forest were interviewed because it was their fifteen minutes of fame.
But everybody also says that making yourself look bigger might scare them off. Camp followers are not brave like hunters, they'll shy away from anything that looks even halfway like a fair fight. Suburban cougars are the same. They also say that if you're walking through a woods that might have bears, to just make a lot of noise, banging on your camping pots and stuff like that.
Or you can just do what we do, we live on the edge of the forest. We have a giant Anatolian Guardian dog and we never go hiking without her. They've been protecting livestock against cheetahs and wolves for about 6,000 years, no bear or cougar would take one on.
Running is the worst possible thing to do, assuming that you can't run faster than a bear, and I don't believe that any human can do that. If the bear isn't hungry, and most bears who live on the fringes of civilization aren't because there's so much garbage, their motivation is simply pride, to assert themselves as the king of the jungle. Letting you run away is not going to do that. What some foresters recommend is to get down on the ground and grovel. Act like a puppy facing an alpha male. Acknowledge his superiority. The foresters claim to have met people who survived such an encounter. The bear just growls and maybe smacks you around a bit, but unlike dogs and cats, they apparently don't kill for fun.
A lot of this came out when that movie "The Bear" was out. A lot of people who work in the forest were interviewed because it was their fifteen minutes of fame.
But everybody also says that making yourself look bigger might scare them off. Camp followers are not brave like hunters, they'll shy away from anything that looks even halfway like a fair fight. Suburban cougars are the same. They also say that if you're walking through a woods that might have bears, to just make a lot of noise, banging on your camping pots and stuff like that.
Or you can just do what we do, we live on the edge of the forest. We have a giant Anatolian Guardian dog and we never go hiking without her. They've been protecting livestock against cheetahs and wolves for about 6,000 years, no bear or cougar would take one on.
Where Do You Live?
On the edge of the wilderness, eh? I'd love that. The only forests around here that Niudo and I can frolick in are being torn up. And not even for good reason. Those stupid kids on their trick bikes think that they can just find a patch of trees, get drunk, break a few limbs, and go on their way. Then, when they're sober, they strip bark from the trees. They've also been digging some more, and making more "ramps" out of dirt to jump their bikes off of. Niudo and I saw them lighting firecrackers and jumping their bikes over them. Then, to add a little to the show, a guy stole some lighter fluid from his dad and was throwing the stuff around. What bugs us is all of the broken beer bottles they leave around.
Sadly, there are no bears to eat any of them. The biggest concious thing you'd find in this "forest" (dubbed mini-mirkwood) is a groundhog.
My 3rd/4th (multiage) grade teacher, had a friend while growing that found a black bear cub and raised it as a pet. It lost all of it's bear instincts. They trained it to do stupid stuff like getting the mail. Then, while provoked, it attacked a kid, and they had to set it free. But, it didn't know how to survive in the wild. They still don't know what happened to it.
-niv
On the edge of the wilderness, eh? I'd love that. The only forests around here that Niudo and I can frolick in are being torn up. And not even for good reason. Those stupid kids on their trick bikes think that they can just find a patch of trees, get drunk, break a few limbs, and go on their way. Then, when they're sober, they strip bark from the trees. They've also been digging some more, and making more "ramps" out of dirt to jump their bikes off of. Niudo and I saw them lighting firecrackers and jumping their bikes over them. Then, to add a little to the show, a guy stole some lighter fluid from his dad and was throwing the stuff around. What bugs us is all of the broken beer bottles they leave around.
Sadly, there are no bears to eat any of them. The biggest concious thing you'd find in this "forest" (dubbed mini-mirkwood) is a groundhog.
My 3rd/4th (multiage) grade teacher, had a friend while growing that found a black bear cub and raised it as a pet. It lost all of it's bear instincts. They trained it to do stupid stuff like getting the mail. Then, while provoked, it attacked a kid, and they had to set it free. But, it didn't know how to survive in the wild. They still don't know what happened to it.
-niv
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Re: Where Do You Live?
If you're going to keep a barely-tame wild animal, you have an obligation to never let your guard down. Letting a bear go out to get the mail would be really stupid even where we live. People come along on bicycles, occasionally children walk by.
I don't know where those people live or how long ago this happened, but today the authorities would never turn that bear back out into the wild. There are plenty of animal rescue ranches. But I guarantee that he's raiding trash cans and compost piles and chicken coops like all the other bears who hang out on the edge of civilization. Probably has even slipped into a couple of swimming pools during warm weather like the bears in L.A. If it's not an area where everybody has a gun, he's probably doing OK. Some patient, kind-hearted person might even have recognized him as a former pet and re-domesticated him. Hopefully somebody a little brighter than the first one!
Northwestern California, we have our own redwoods.
We've got elk, bears, cougars, foxes, deer, raccoons, chipmunks, and quite a few birds we haven't identified yet. But still, this kind of life isn't for most people. Just about everybody else around here has found a bear in their pantry and people who go horseback riding see cougars all the time. The deer eat almost everything in the garden, and our dog, being a livestock guardian by instinct, considers them part of her herd and it took them about two hours to figure that out.
People don't realize what a responsibility it is to take in a wild animal, no matter how well "domesticated." Dogs have been captive-bred for about 10,000 years, and it still only takes two or three generations to get a throwback who will attack humans, like the Presa Canario who killed that poor lady in San Francisco. Wolves are virtually identical genetically to dogs and they make good pets... except they don't have the instinct to regard all humans as alphas.
If you're going to keep a barely-tame wild animal, you have an obligation to never let your guard down. Letting a bear go out to get the mail would be really stupid even where we live. People come along on bicycles, occasionally children walk by.
I don't know where those people live or how long ago this happened, but today the authorities would never turn that bear back out into the wild. There are plenty of animal rescue ranches. But I guarantee that he's raiding trash cans and compost piles and chicken coops like all the other bears who hang out on the edge of civilization. Probably has even slipped into a couple of swimming pools during warm weather like the bears in L.A. If it's not an area where everybody has a gun, he's probably doing OK. Some patient, kind-hearted person might even have recognized him as a former pet and re-domesticated him. Hopefully somebody a little brighter than the first one!
man on the hill
Registered Member
This thread ties in with another thread on language that can be found at http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25739 To know why it completely ties in with this topic, you must read to page 2.
R
Redoubtable
Guest
Re: Re: Part Bear?
There is a Kenyan who can run a 3 minute 47 second mile. I really don't think any bear can do that.
There is a Kenyan who can run a 3 minute 47 second mile. I really don't think any bear can do that.