<div class="text-justify">I love folklore, I am a Pagan so it comes with the territory. What I do not like is when people confuse myths with reality and facts with fiction. Unfortunately, the result is often the undermining of their or other peoples abilities. Sure, I too have seen people that seem like they are not using their brain at all but that does not change the fact that they actually are, I just don't like the way they are. You are using more than 10% of the brain and as much as I have enjoyed the Lucy movie, it is just that, a movie.</div>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/qYuRe7R.jpg"> <sub><sub><a href="https://pixabay.com/en/mental-health-psychology-psychiatry-2313428/">CC0 image, Pixabay, author: Tumisu</a></sub></sub> </center>
<div class="text-justify">Today I will help you to separate facts from fiction once again and remind you that you are more special than you think so do not let anyone undermine your natural abilities. Your brain is an amazing organ and by saying that you are using only 10% of it is kind of insulting it and yourself. You are more powerful than you realize and it was never about not using your brain but instead the way you were using it.</div>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/cC53IJ8.png"> </center>
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<div class="text-justify">We do not know for certain exactly when and where the myth about 10% started but we can trace it back to 1970s when psychologist and educator Georgi Lozanov proposed the teaching method of suggestopedia and suggested: "that we might be using only five to ten percent of our mental capacity". The method is mostly used for learning languages. Ever since then, the 10% thing found its way into popular culture and became a part of many movies and books.</div>
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<center><b>You are using 10% only if you are brain damaged</b></center>
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<div class="pull-right"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/kOqLaUY.png"><br>
<sub><sub><a href="https://pixabay.com/en/anxiety-mental-health-brain-disorder-1535743/">CC0 image, Pixabay, author:teeveesee </a></sub></sub></div>
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<div class="text-justify">Brain scans have shown that no matter what you are doing, most of the brain areas are always active. Some brain areas are sometimes more active than others but positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow us to see the activity of the living brain and reveal that even during sleep, all parts of it show some level of activity. Only when there is brain damage are some areas not working. The mapping functions onto areas of the brain show how there are distinct regions for different kinds of information processing but no function-less areas have been found.</div>
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<div class="text-justify"><b>The words we use are important. Saying how people use only 10% of their brain is not the same as saying that people have the ability to learn more or do more than they currently do. The capacity of the brain is huge and no, we are not using it to its full potential in terms of learning as much as we should. I agree with that. We can always learn more but it is not because we have only 10% of the brain to work with. It is because we choose not to learn more. Instead of saying that humans use only 10% of their brain, we can say that some humans choose to use their brain abilities and potential less than they could have. </b></div>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/cC53IJ8.png"> </center>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/BO1geBT.png"></center>
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<div class="text-justify">The human brain weighs 1.4 kilograms and has about one billion neurons with each of them forming about 1,000 connections to other neurons. This amounts to more than a trillion connections. Keep in mind that one neuron does not mean one memory, oooo no no. Every neuron helps with many memories at a time, and that exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to around 2.5 petabytes. There is still a lot to learn about the brain and I always say how some of the money (all of it) from the military should be invested in science that actually helps and not destroys humanity. You can check an interesting research that debunked the 10% myth here:</div>
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<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776484/">The Human Brain in Numbers: A Linearly Scaled-up Primate Brain</a><b> by Suzana Herculano-Houzel</b>
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<center><b>Coding in 0s and 1s? Nope.<br>A brain cell uses 26 different ways to code its "bits."</b></center>
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<div class="pull-left"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/mOBPcn6.jpg"><br>
<sub><sub><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/hPKTYwJ4FUo">CC0 image, Unsplash, author:sevenshooter</a></sub></sub></div>
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<div class="text-justify">When we read, write, talk to someone or think about anything, we are also creating new memories. Everything that you can remember, from knowledge about differential equations to how your first date looked like, is a memory or a piece of data that your brain has. The "binary message" from a neuron (to fire or not to fire) can produce 26 different sizes of neurons. The amazing thing when comparing a brain to a computer is that a computer requires 50 million times more energy to do the same task as a human brain. The research suggests that the human brain may be able to hold as much information in its memory as is contained on the entire Internet. You can read about it here:</div>
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<a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/10778">Nanoconnectomic upper bound on the variability of synaptic plasticity</a><b> by Thomas M Bartol Jr, Cailey Bromer, Justin Kinney, Michael A Chirillo, Jennifer N Bourne, Kristen M Harris, Terrence J Sejnowski</b>
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<div class="text-justify"><b><i>The research is amazing and shows how our biochemical pathways are quite efficient. Brain truly is a remarkable organ that is working all the time and with all its parts, many many parts. Think about this next time someone says that you are using only 10% of it.</i></b></div>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/cC53IJ8.png"> </center>
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<div class="text-justify">We have already covered how the brain has the capacity to store an immense amount of information at the synapses between nerve cells. This next research that I want to bring to your attention tells us how those memories are stored. Neurons in the brain are connected by synapses and when chemical signals move across them, information is being transmitted through the brain. When we have a new idea or come in contact with some new information, millions of brain cells communicate with one another and release neurotransmitters across synapses.</div>
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<center><b>The balance between shrinking and enlarging...</b></center>
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<div class="pull-left"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/ttbCFQA.png&quot;"><br>
<sub><sub><a href="https://pixabay.com/en/neuron-synapse-science-brain-160944/">CC0 image, Pixabay, author:OpenClipart-Vectors</a></sub></sub></div>
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<div class="text-justify">The hippocampus, critical to memory, was studied using electron microscopy. The researchers were expecting to see the synapses enlarging but some were also getting smaller. One of the scientists noted how these findings make sense because if the synapses only grew larger we would eventually run out of storage space or reach our limit. By varying the size of synapses, more of them can actually be stored and the capacity of the brain increases.</div>
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<div class="text-justify"><b>Understanding plasticity processes in the hippocampus is very important for understanding the biology of memory. This research demonstrated how the induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) increases the storage capacity of synapses in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. After LTP, the information storage capacity of dentate synapses was much lower than in a different part of the hippocampus, area CA1. The question of these rapidly occurring changes persisting during the maintenance phase of LTP will hopefully be answered in some other future study. You can read this one here:</b></div>
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<a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/E2410">Long-term potentiation expands information content of hippocampal dentate gyrus synapses</a><b> by Cailey Bromer, Thomas M. Bartol, Jared B. Bowden, Dusten D. Hubbard, Dakota C. Hanka, Paola V. Gonzalez, Masaaki Kuwajima, John M. Mendenhall, Patrick H. Parker, Wickliffe C. Abraham, Terrence J. Sejnowski, and Kristen M. Harris</b>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/cC53IJ8.png"> </center>
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<center><img src="https://i.imgur.com/D3fnZ09.png"></center>
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<div class="text-justify">We use all of our brains. It is how we use them that is different from one human to another. We are all born (not including genetic defects and injuries) with the same potential so why do some create wonders and others do not? Because some realize how big that potential is and some do not.</div>
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<center><b>Every child has the potential to become a genius</b></center>
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<div class="pull-right"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/9BGEC6a.png"><br>
<sub><sub><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/qDY9ahp0Mto">CC0 image, Unsplash, author:benwhitephotography</a></sub></sub></div>
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<div class="text-justify">There are two methods of storing information that are used the most. One is by repetition and is most frequently used and the other one is with strong emotional influence. When you see something that produces a strong emotional response in you (good or bad) you will either remember it or forget it as a way of the coping mechanism but we all learn by repeating. Every repetition strengthens the synapses in charge of it, from learning how to walk to remembering up to fifty digits of PI, we learn by repeating. We are different when it comes to additional aids needed with that repetition. Some need sound and some need colors but repetition is the key factor here and keep in mind that the more things you associate with the information (sound, image, emotion etc) the more easier you will remember it. The first thing every human should learn is that new information is fun, good, beneficial, important and valuable. If we learn our children to love learning and if we teach them how to learn, we have done the biggest job. The rest is up to them.</div>
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<div class="text-justify"><b>Every human being is amazing and that includes you too. Play with your brain and see if I am telling the truth. Pick up a new thing to learn, anything, and repeat that something (action, sentence, behavior) a couple of times every day and see if you learned it by the end of the week. You have the ability to learn and no, you are not only using 10% of your brain. Your brain is working just fine but it is about what is it working that matters. Are you using it to its fullest potential? You could be. The hidden storehouse of your untapped brain power is right there inside you. It is called passion. Passion for knowledge, growth, progress, love,&nbsp;and improvement. Passionate curiosity is the hidden truth you are looking for. Be curious, always be curious.</b></div>
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<b>If you are interested in learning more on this subject, check out these REFERENCES:</b><br>
<sub><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/">What Is the Memory Capacity of the Human Brain?</a><b> from scientificamerican.com</b><br>
<a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321060.php">What percentage of our brain do we use?</a><b> from medicalnewstoday.com</b><br>
<a href="https://www.livescience.com/53751-brain-could-store-internet.html">The Human Brain's Memory Could Store the Entire Internet</a><b> from livescience.com</b><br>
<a href="https://www.labroots.com/trending/cell-and-molecular-biology/8360/brain-s-storage-capacity-expand">The Brain's Storage Capacity can Expand</a><b> from labroots.com</b><br>
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2016/01/30/study-your-brains-capacity-is-10-times-greater-than-previously-thought/#47034d90528e">Your Brain's Capacity Is 10 Times Greater Than Previously Thought</a><b> from forbes.com</b><br>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth">Ten percent of the brain myth</a><b> from wikipedia.org</b></sub>
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<center><h2>Until next time,<br>KEEP YOUR SMILE ON!</h2></center>
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<h3>Image sources AND LICENCES in order of appearance:</h3>
<div class="text-justify"><h6>- all images used in this post are free for commercial use, they are royalty free with the links to original images provided under them<br>- titles are made with the CC0 image from Pixabay that can be found <a href="https://pixabay.com/en/mental-health-psychology-psychiatry-2313428/">here</a><br>- line divider that I use is from FREE CLIPART LIBRARY, and is <a href="https://pngtree.com/free-icon/music_15374">here</a><br>- my bitmoji avatar was created on https://www.bitmoji.com/, visit the site to create yourown<br>
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<h2>PROUD MEMBER OF:</h2>
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