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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 4632048" data-attributes="member: 20741">Alright.  Time to come to the rescue of the "myth".Shocking thing is, the myth of the so-called 10% brain use?Isn't a myth at all. The urban legend and misconception cited on the venerable and always accurate Wikipedia? Inaccurate and - more to the point - incomplete.While perhaps overstated and misunderstood, the general contention that 90% of our brain is unused to its full potential is entirely justified - and well supported by inconvenient medical evidence.The evidence in support of the "10% myth" arises out of identified extreme cases of hydrocephalus.  A childhood developmentnal illness, hydrocephalus exerts pressure and displacement in the cranial cavity upon the brain, filling large portions of the cranium with cerebrospinal fluid for the entire life of the individual, displacing the brain within the skull and greatly retarding the physical growth and development of the brain-as-physical-organ.Most indentified sufferers of extreme hydrocephalus show significant mental retardation.But most is far  - very, very far - from all. Significant portions of those persons who are identified as having suffered from extreme hydrocephalus exhibit few symptoms or cognitive impairment.In some extreme cases, those who suffer from profound retardation of brain growth, who possess a brain that has a mass of a TENTH OR LESS of the normal  human brain mass of 1.5kg, exhibit above average intelligence and suffer from absolutely no cognitive, physical or social impairment at all.  One holds an Honours degree in mathematics. In many cases, these individuals are identified as suffering from the condition only as a consequence of diagnostic happenstance.  That is not a small point and many potential devils are hidden in that detail.The most inconvenient truth concerning Dr. Lorber's research is that it is well documented, peer reviewed and extremely difficult to explain - without concluding that the 10% myth, isn't a myth at all.The more unsettling realization is that the number of people who suffer from significant to extreme retardation of brain mass growth  - yet who suffer from no observable cognitive symptoms - will never be indentifed unless there is some reason to perform an MRI or other extensive diagnostic brain scan upon them.  In short - while the condtion is doubtless quite rare, there may be far more such individuals just walking around  with the "problem" than we suspect.  We simply do not know - and probably never will. And yes, you might be one of them.So...while this research in the pages of Science may well be inconvenient and extreme in the result, it certainly DOES support the "myth" that we only use 10% of our brains (or less) to their full potential.  And the implication is also a fair one that we might  be able to accomplish much more if, as a species, we were all able to optomize the use of our brain mass, on a day-to-day basis, so that we squeezed as much performance per neuron out of our brains as in the extreme cases of hydrocephalus documented in Dr. Lorber's research.In the result - not 100% stupid at all. I gently suggest that you need to rethink your premise and revise your views accordingly.<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1511795?dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Reciprocal neurological developments of twins disc...[Dev Med Child Neurol. 1992] - PubMed Result</a><a href="http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm" target="_blank">Where Is Consciousness? I've Lost It!</a>As I recall, there was an episode of Nova, (or perhaps Nature) which dealt with this topic as well and documents the brain scans and interviews with the people who suffer from this condition.  The conclusion left in the episode was that in some circumstances, during infant development the brain can rewire itself drastically - such that although the cerebral cortex is entirely missing - it is missing without observable cognitive consequence.</blockquote>

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