The short answer is, no. We don’t use only 10% of our brains.
We use virtually all of our brain. Mind you, science’s understanding of exactly how we use any single part of the brain is just starting to come together. What we do know is all sections of our brain get used.
A story to illustrate my point: Â Back in my college days, I took a class on Biopsycholgy. The professor started the class with the sentence “This class will teach you what part of your brain is the best to have damaged.” The class then spent extensive time teaching us about all the horrible things resulting from damage in nearly any part of the brain. As it turns out, it all does useful stuff. The science of exactly what happens where and how isn’t complete yet, but we’re at the point where it’s safe to say: We use all of our brain, just not at the same time.
Does this answer the question? If it is specific to the roughly 3 pound mass of grey stuff in your head, yes. If it is asked asking about the mind instead of the brain, I’ll have to answer it a bit more.
The problem with putting numbers on well anything in the mind is a problem psychology has been trying to solve for over a hundred years (less if you cut out the time when behaviorists decided just to ignore anything they couldn’t measure). Â As a side note, the lack of being able to do this consistently is why some people believe psychology is a pseudoscience. But I digress.
To properly answer the question of do we use 10% of the mind’s potential, we need several pieces of information. The first is a definition of what the mind is. The second is what the mind’s potential is. The third is how can we objectively calculate this. There are probably more bits which would allow us to answer this question further and with better accuracy, but these are the basics.
Any cursory look through either scientific, philosophical, religious, or mystical definitions of the mind would tell you none of these groups agree with themselves let alone eachother. We still aren’t sure what the mind is in any exact sense.
What is definitely a harder question is exactly what the mind’s potential is. While we’ve collectively ruled out some things like being able to move cars with our minds, we’ve also had to incorporate a much larger definition of what the mind is capable of when properly trained.
Yoga masters are capable of an array of things most people would find “impossible.” Â Meditation can do astonishing things with blood pressure and other bodily functions. Biofeedback can accomplish similar feats only 50 years ago would have been considered impossible.
What is the mind’s potential? We don’t know. It is tempting to say “infinite” and over time (especially evolutionary time) this is probably true. The question of what is any one mind’s potential… We’ve got an array of things trying to assign numbers or scores to that ranging from personality and intelligence tests to skills and job compatability tests.
Yet, even the best of these tests only measures specifically defined parameteres, not full potential. Even worse, our most standard test for something as basic as intelligence (IQ) keeps having to be renormed every decade to keep being accurate (Norming is the process a psychological test goes through to make sure it provides an accurate range in the group of people who are to use it).
And even if we had a definition of what mind was and knew just how good it could get, we’d still need to develop an accurate way of measuring it so we could find out if we used 10% of it or not. The details of exactly how hard it would be to create such a test are their own branch of psycholgy called psychometrics and volumes have been written on the subject.
One other possibility the questioner might have had is: If we develop our minds, do we get superpowers? As per usual, the answer to this question depends on what one means by “superpowers.” Will we be able to move faster than a speeding locomotive, leap tall buildings in a single bound, and bend powerful rivers with our hands? Probably not.
Could we heal faster, maintain a higher level of heath, and do normal body processes more efficiently? Yes. Of course, under this definition, any person in good physical shape has “superpowers” compared to someone whose muscles have atrophied from say being in space too long.
So, in the final analysis, we use more than 10% of our brains. Â We probably use much, much less than 10% of our minds but wouldn’t know either way. And we probably aren’t going to start flying around any time soon.
