Why do humans only use 10% of their brain?

Question

This question was asked 1 year ago and 2 years ago, a update is needed in current civil information for this question xD. Iv had my theories of our brain cells being knocked off constantly, but i don't know.

Answer 1

Humans only Consciously use 10 % because the other 90% is constantly used for involuntary functions i.e. breathing, digestion, and all other organ control.

Answer 2

I don't know how much of our brain we use. The common catch phrase states 10%.

I do not believe that the average human uses the maximum capacity of his or her brains. I believe that this is because, instead of the evolutionary approach that states everything started off simple and is getting bigger and better and stronger and smarter, I believe the creation model that states everything was originally created very good and is experiencing degradation. This degradation would fit well with all known physical law and all observations of the biosphere.

When the original "kind" of animal was created, it was created with a certain amount of built in or pre-programmed informational variation capacity. This variation could be expressed throughout the generations of offspring by different combinations of gene duplication or amplification, inversion, deletion and reinsertion, and transposition. Special enzymes carry out these processes and even control the timing of them. They are triggered by environmental stimuli but the mechanism is poorly understood.

    Though these means, genes are turned on and off whereby different characters can be expressed. Many experimental evidence supports this:

The Laysan Island bird study.  [Conant 1988, Pimm 1988]

African Finch study [Smith 1987]

Guppy study [Reznick et al. 1990, Reznick and Bryga 1987]

[Collier et al. 1973]

many more that I will not cite.

We have seen in humans, some seem to have special abilities over others. Einstine, Motzart, Shakesphere, Tiger Woods, and any other gifted athlete. Are we to suppose that they have evolved further then other people. Is there ability because random point mutations created more specific information in their genes then the rest of the population.

The answer is no. What we see is that gene expression, through the mechanisms described above, have turned on or shut off traits in different individuals. I believe that the original man Adam was pre-programed with all the ability that we will see in the world but with each generation and each increase of population some of the non-expressed genes can be lost forever. Some are retained to be expressed in future generations. So the reason that we seem to be using only 10% of our brain is because we are basically the chihuahua (shallow gene pool) version of a wolf type (rich gene pool) ancestor.

Answer 3

It is only a myth that we only use 10% of our brains. We use all of it for various functions.  

Answer 4

The statement "humans only use 10% of their brains" has little scientific basis and in any case can be interpreted in different ways. Only 10% of the neurons? Only 10% of "thinking power"?

I recommend reading the Straight Dope article linked below, for good info on this oft-quoted but poorly-understood "statistic".

Edit: LOL at Yenta. No doubt.

Answer 5

We don't only use 10% of our brains.

At any one time, only about 10% of the neurons in your brain are actually firing (any more and you're having an epileptic fit) - but WHICH 10% is different from moment-to-moment, and over time, we use 100% of our brains.

Answer 6

I'm not sure - my brain doesn't seem to be running at full capacity...