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90% of Your Brain: Difference between revisions
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{{trope|wppage=Ten_percent_of_brain_myth}}
[[File:jojobrain 6760.png|thumb|link=[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]
{{quote|''"[This myth is] one of the hardiest weeds in the garden of psychology."''
|'''Donald McBurney''', neuropsychologist.}}
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* ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' does something similar with ''breathing''. The real secret to Kenshiro's [[Charles Atlas Superpower]] is harnessing the traditionally untapped 70% of his breathing. The Ripple in ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' works that way, too.
* The Stone Mask-created [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampires]] in ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure]]'' gain their power through the activation of unused parts of the brain via acupuncture. This awakens the human's evolutionary potential (with abilities like [[Wall Crawling]], liquid eye beams, superspeed/strength, regeneration, sucking blood through their fingers, and creating zombies) and it inverts the lifeforce energy in their bodies (making them undead-like beings weak to sunlight and [[Battle Aura|Ripple]], the amplified essence of life)
* Played straight in ''[[
* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam]]'''s Universal Century:
** ''[[Chars Counterattack|Char's Counterattack]]'' (where it is mentioned) may use this explanation for why [[Psychic Powers|Newtypes]] exist—that people used only a part of their brains on Earth, and began to use the rest after moving into space. However, it was said to be "half" of the brain being used, not 10%. Also the conversation was between a couple of teenagers, so they may simply not know what they're talking about (they also take a fairly romantic interpretation of the idea/purpose of Newtypes, which Gundam [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|goes back and forth on)]].
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** This is in turn based on the writings Timothy Leary, specifically the 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness which predicted that people's brains would develop in new ways in the future, becoming more enlightened to cope with the challenges of space travel.
* The foundation of superpowers in ''[[NEEDLESS]]''.
* In an episode of ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]]'', Reborn gives Gokudera a unique brand of [[Training from Hell]] by making him eat ramen while withstanding I-pin's Gyoza-ken. Reborn's technical explanation is that, since the Gyoza-ken
* This is part of the premise for ''[[Psyren]]''. Like many others, this explains psychic powers, though they seem no less limited than any other set of superpowers in other series.
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* The [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] novel ''The Gallifrey Chronicles'' comes ''very close'' to getting this right ... but doesn't.
{{quote|There was an old myth that humans only used ten percent of their brains. This was a simple misunderstanding. Give or take, there was activity in every part of the human brain. But the physical structures were capable of ten times the activity they performed. It wasn't that a human being had a brain like a house with nine tenths of the rooms sealed off, it was more like a road network wasn't carrying as much traffic as they were designed to carry.}}
* In ''[[
{{quote|It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary gray goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to [[Brain Food|serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys]]. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by [[The Stoner|certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected]]. They’d say “Wow!” a lot. And no one would do much work. }}
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'''Torqumada''': No, because that's a ridiculous urban myth.
'''Thande''': Shut up, I'm trying to [[Lies to Children|explain something]] to the unscientific Muggles here. }}
* Deconstructed with [[SCP Foundation|SCP]]-[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1475 1475], a scientific that after a non-reproducible procedure got the complete, 100% control of his brain and nervous system, [[Blessed with Suck|at the expenses of]] having lost his autonomic nervous control (read, the body ability to self-regulate the internal organs), meaning that now he has to stay awake all the time concentrated in keeping himself alive. The author of this one wrote it due to [[Pet Peeve Trope|their hatred for this trope]].
== Western Animation ==
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** [https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness This] 44 years old public servant uses 10% of his brain, all the time, because, well, 10% is all that remains.
* One source of the myth itself (of many possible ones) is a series of experiments done on rodents in whch the poor creatures had large parts of their brains burned away but could still run a particular maze. However, all this proves is that memory is distributed in the brain rather than localized; the rodents still lost other functions. Besides, mice aren't men.
* Approximately 90% of cells in the brain are not actually neurons, but glial helper cells that keep the neurons alive and functioning. So only 10% of the cells are used directly; the other 90% are vital to keeping that 10% healthy and alive.
* The famous [[wikipedia:Phineas Gage|Phineas Gage]] had a railroad spike driven through his brain, causing massive damage to his frontal lobes. Besides being the logic center of your brain, the frontal lobe also controls your personality. He recovered and his memories and abilities were intact, but his friends said he was "no longer Gage" - he lost his moral compass and was much more irritable, profane, and dishonest. (To be fair, who ''wouldn't'' be incredibly irritable after having an iron spike driven through their head?)
* Dolphins and other cetaceans have adapted to function actively while 50% of their cerebrum is ''asleep''. This is good, since their breathing is entirely under conscious control, and total loss of consciousness thus equals suffocation.
** Some birds can also have half their brain asleep while the other half keeps watch for danger from one eye.
** Research has shown that humans sleeping in an unfamiliar place have one half of the brain sleeping more lightly than usual, while the other half is fully asleep. That's one reason to stay in bed longer on your next camping trip.
* As the ''savant'' phenomenon proves, people don't use their brains to their full efficiency. We have potential for far greater mathematical prowess that we normally demonstrate in practice. There have been even a few instances where people have received minor brain damage, and retained most of their faculties quite intact, but gained some ''savant'' like skills such as counting dates hundreds of years forward, although they were not as advanced as full savants. Of course, savantism generally has mental disorders attached and what they're talented at is extremely limited. Maybe it's best our brains are a 'jack of all trades' rather than focusing all its time [[Rain Man|counting cards]].
** These are not necessarily a "more efficient use of your brain", just a different one.
* There was a girl who had half her brain gone. The left hemisphere was just not there. So far she seems to be living a fairly normal life with a fairly normal, if quirky, degree of intellect.
** While half of the brain can be removed in a young child and they can still live a fairly normal life due to the other half compensating (due to the symmetrical design), an adult who had half their brain removed in adulthood
* May have originated when we only ''knew the function of'' (some small percentage) of the brain, and that got misreported as "We only ''use'' (some small percentage) of our brain." Areas having to do with other than motor control or sensations are now called "association areas", and they have a role in interpreting, integrating, and acting on sensory input in combination with stored memories. Higher brain functions, in other words. In the same way that your house has only a fraction of its rooms being actively used at any given time, only a fraction - a rather large one - of your brain is active at any given moment - but, as with the house, that doesn't mean the rest isn't useful. The history of this trope is fairly well outlined in the free first chapter of [http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047143499X.html this book]. Furthermore, Bill Nye (y'know, [[Bill Nye the Science Guy|the Science Guy]]) wrote a fairly accessible essay on the subject [
** It's been shown that the ability to interpret and integrate sensory input takes a large amount of processing power from the brain. Octopuses, with their eight arms, have to give up complete control of their arms just to use them all at once. And even then, they still can't form a mental image of whatever it is their arms might be holding.
** TL;DR: We do use all of our brain, it's just that most of it is for things like autonomic maintenance and high-def sensory processing rather than higher reasoning functions.
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[[Category:Artistic License Biology]]
[[Category:Magic and Powers]]
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