10% of Brain Myth

PROTIP: Press 'i' to view the image gallery, 'v' to view the video gallery, or 'r' to view a random entry.

This entry has been rejected due to incompleteness or lack of notability.

To dispute this DEADPOOL flagging, please provide suggestions for how this entry can be improved, or request editorship to help maintain this entry.

NOTE: This Entry was related to the 2013 April Fools joke. For more information, please check out the KYMdb Offline Crisis Response Initiative.

About

The 10% of brain myth is the widely perpetuated urban legend that most or all humans only make use of 20%, 10% or some other small percentage of their brains. It has been misattributed to people including Albert Einstein. By association, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.^[1]

Origin

According to a related origin story, the 10% myth most likely arose from a misunderstanding of neurological research in the late 19th century or early 20th century. For example, the functions of many brain regions are complex enough that the effects of damage are subtle, leading early neurologists to wonder what these regions did.^[2]The brain was also discovered to consist mostly of glial cells, which seemed to have very minor functions. Dr. James W. Kalat, author of the textbook Biological Psychology, points out that neuroscientists in the 1930s knew about the large number of "local" neurons in the brain. The misunderstanding of the function of local neurons may have led to the 10% myth.