The Beautiful Brain: Do we only use 10% as the new movie LUCY claims?

I love the brain. It is my favorite organ. Yes, I have a favorite organ. The brain is amazing. It controls every aspect of who we are, and yet is effected by so many things. The brain is mysterious. We have no understanding of how thoughts or consciousness is actually obtained. We do not know what part of this organ is what makes us aware. Yet, it has been suggested that the prefrontal cortex is what separates us from other animals. We have the most developed frontal cortex of any animal (many of which have none), and it is responsible for executive functioning, impulse control, and some movement among other things - behaviors which arguably make us human.

Did you know that your brain is really small. Take your hands, put them in fists, and put them together. That will give you an idea of the size of your brain. However, the cerebral cortex, or the top part of the brain, is full of many folds, called gyri. If you were to lay the cerebral cortex flat it would be the size of a newspaper laid out flat. Can you imagine how intricate the curves are that something approximately the size of two fists is really the size of a whole sheet of newspaper? Fascinating right?

There is so much that we still have to discover about the brain. There are many mysteries yet to solve. Which I think is one reason why scientifically we cannot rule out the existence of a soul. Despite this, there is so much that we do know about the brain. We have a good idea of the function of each area. We know that specific areas are in control of different functions in the brain. For example, if you have brain damage in Broca's area then you may have difficulty producing words. If you have damage in Wernicke's area you may be able to speak just fine, only your words come out as complete gibberish - or word salad.

Is not the brain an amazing and fascinating organ? Just looking at the above picture you can see how much we do know about the specific functions of the brain, and how much we depend on each and every function every day of our life.

I just wish that someone would tell this to Hollywood.

This is what I saw on the way to work today. Can you see the caption on the top? It reads:

THE AVERAGE PERSON USES 10%

OF THEIR BRAIN CAPACITY.

IMAGINE WHAT SHE COULD DO WITH 100%

 

The average person uses 100% of their brain. They use specific parts of it for specific functions. When you move your finger, you use the part that moves your finger. When you think about shell fish, you use the neuron associated with shell fish. Your brain is an amazing, beautiful, and complex machine - I mean organ. Yet we use 100% of our brain! Yes, even those annoying people that you think have no intelligence at all - they use all of their brain.

 

 

Do not get me wrong, there are ways that our brain can become more efficient. Or brain utilizes myelination, which is a fatty tissue which wraps around the axon of each dendrite. Dendrites are the cells of our brain, and axons are like their tails. An axon hooks up with dendrites of other neurons, and the all network together and communicate with each other. The myelination changes the response time of the neuron from a city bus line - having to stop at every single bus station - to the express buss - only stopping at a few select stations. It is more efficient and faster.

 

Around the age of 13 - the out of control adolescent period - the prefrontal cortex looses the myelination that it did have. The planning, control, and more 'human' aspects of ourselves do not work as efficiently during this period. Then the brain myelinates the entire prefrontal cortex and parents breath a huge sigh of relief - around the time our kids are in their mid 20s.

 

Yet even during this awkward and impulsive adolescent stage - we still use ALL OF OUR BRAIN. We just do not use it as efficiently as we could.

 

There so many plots that could be created off of the mysterious brain. You could even make a person who gains the ability to do everything that Lucy can do - because even I admit it, it is pretty cool. Except that they are putting up billboards with really really false science on them.

 

Creating another generation of children who think that we really do only use 10% of our brain.

 

So in conclusion: