In the Hollywood action-film Lucy, actor Morgan Freeman—playing a world-renowned neurologist— speaks to a packed auditorium. “It’s estimated most human beings only use 10 percent of their brains’ capacity,” he says. “Imagine if we could access 100 percent.” You may have heard that claim before. Unfortunately, it’s just not true. And after watching Lucy, Ramina Adam and Jason Chan, two neuroscience graduate students at Western University in Ontario, decided to set the record straight. “We realized we had to do something about all this misinformation,” Adam says. They set out to collect common misperceptions about how the brain works, and we lent a hand in debunking them.
1. We use only a fraction of our brains.
In 1907, famed psychologist William James claimed, “We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” A journalist later misquoted him as saying the average person develops only 10 percent of his mental capacity. Scans, however, show that we use every part of our brain, though not all regions are active at once. (Sorry, Morgan.) That’s why damage to any area of the brain—such as the aftermath of a stroke—usually results in mental and behavioral effects.
2. Playing classical music to infants makes them smarter.
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