What would humans be capable of if we used 100% of our brain instead of 10%?

Question

I've always heard we only use a small portion of our brains, not sure if 10% is dead on accurate, so what would we be able to do if we used it ALL?

Answer 1

for that to happen in the first place, the amount of fat had to balance the amount of water in the brain and if that happens at all, well goodbye coz you're gonna die.

that's why there's homeostasis and that's why some people die from taking ecstasy coz they drink too much water which balances with fat and then floods their brain.

Answer 2

a.) We would have "super powers".

b.) We would be able to travel to Venus...or any other planet/galaxy.

c.) We would all be geniuses!

Answer 3

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10pe...

We do use all of our brain, just not all at the same time. Only around 10% of the neurones are ever firing at once. When any more than that are firing it generally means the person is having an epileptic fit.

Answer 4

As posted above, this is a myth.  We use all of our brains.  If I were to choose to use mine to be productive all the time instead of procrastinating answering questions here, I might be able to do more - or this might be just the rest my brain needs between periods of productivity. :)

Answer 5

This notion of 10% is very old and it's very wrong.  It was based on how much grey matter was observed on the surfaces of dissected brains.

In fact, modern brain scans have shown that the human brain runs at full capacity all the time.  (okay, okay...  not ALL the time - but you get the idea)

Think about the last time you embarked on a major new project and had a LOT of new stuff to learn.  I'll bet you started to forget things that you weren't thinking about anymore.  That's the brain recycling memory connections.  It wouldn't do that if there was a bunch of excess capacity.

Interestingly, the human brain reaches its maximum number of available neurons at about age 3.  After that, the neuron count drops steadily.